Skip to main content

Full text of "Early Spring in Massachusetts: From the Journals of Henry David Thoreau"

See other formats 


Google 



This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project 

to make the world's books discoverable online. 

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject 

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books 

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. 

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the 

publisher to a library and finally to you. 

Usage guidelines 

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the 
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to 
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. 
We also ask that you: 

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for 
personal, non-commercial purposes. 

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine 
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the 
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. 

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find 
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. 

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just 
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other 
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of 
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner 
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe. 

About Google Book Search 

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers 
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web 

at |http: //books .google .com/I 



/y / 



%? I^enrp TD, Cl)oreatu 



RIVERSIDE EDITION, 

I. A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRI- 
MACK RIVERS. 
II. WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS. 

III. THE MAINE WOODS. 

IV. CAPE COD. 

V. EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
VI. SUMMER. With a Map of Concord. 
VII. AUTUMN. 
VIII. WINTER. 
IX. EXCURSIONS. 
X. MISCELLANIES. With a Biographical Sketch 
by Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
XI. FAMILIAR LETTERS. Edited, with an Intro- 
duction and Notes, by Frank B. Sanborn. 
II volumes, crown 8vo, each, with an Index, jli.50; the 
set, cloth, in box, JI16.50; half calf, $33.00; half calf, 
gilt top, I35-7S- 



CAPE COD. Holiday Edition. Illustrated in water- 
colors by Miss Amelia B. Watson. ^ vols, crown 
8vo, $5.00. 

WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS. Holiday 
Editioiu With an Introduction by Bradford 
ToRREV, and a8 full-page photogravure illustrations. 
I vol. lamo. 

The Same. Cambridge Classics. With a Biographical 
Sketch by Ralph waldo Emerson, i vol. crown 
SVOy J^i.oo. 

The Same. Rvvtrsid* Aiding Series. 2 vols. i6mo, 
J|3.oo. 

POEMS OFNATURE. Selected and edited by Henry 
S. Salt and Frank B. Sanborn. i6mo, $1.50. 

THOREAU'S THOUGHTS. Selections from the Writ- 
ings of Henry D. Thoreau. Edited by H. G. O. Blake. 
With Bibliography. i6mo, gilt top, $i.oo. 

THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES AND WILD 
APPLES. With Biographical Sketch by Emerson. 
i6mo, paper, 15 cents, net. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 







iHtbeirjeiUie <(Stittton 



THE WRITINGS OF 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

il^ITH BIBUOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTIONS 
AND FULL INDEXES 

VOLUME V 



?• 



7 



IN 



EARLY SPRING 
MASSACHUSETTS 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 



EDITED BY 

H. G. O. BLAKE 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 



y «»VA,o COlifSf t,„,,, 






Copyright, 1881, 1893, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN Jt CO. 

.^ rights reserved. 



:* 



fV Ri9erHd0 Prmt, Cam^Hdpf, Jr«».. r. 5. A, 

XlMtft>t)riwd aud Prinled by H. a Houf bum & Couipaqy. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Henby David Thoreau was bom in Con- 
cord, Massachusetts, July 12, 1817, and died 
there May 6, 1862. Most of his life was spent 
in that town, and most of the localities referred 
to in this volume are to be found there. His 
Journal, from which the following selections 
were made, was bequeathed to me by his sister 
Sophia, who died October 7, 1876, at Bangor, 
Maine. Before it came into my possession I 
had been in the habit of borrowing volumes of 
it from time to time, and thus continuing an in- 
tercourse with its author which I had enjoyed, 
through occasional visits and correspondence, 
for many years before his death, and which I 
regard as perhaps the highest privilege of my 
life. 

In reading the Journal for my own satisfac- 
tion, I had sometimes been wont to attend each 
day to what had been written on the same day of 
the month in some other year; desiring thus to 
be led to notice, in my walks, the phenomena 
which Thoreau noticed, so to be brought nearer 



vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

to the writer by observing the same sights, 
sounds, etc., and if possible have my love of 
nature quickened by him. This habit suggested 
the arrangement of dates in the following pages, 
viz., the bringing together of passages under the 
sam; day of Temonai in different years. In 
this way I hoped to make an interesting picture 
of the progress of the seasons, of Thoreau's 
year. It was evidently painted with a most 
genuine love, and often apparently in the open 
air, in the very presence of the phenomena 
described, so that the written page brings the 
mind of the reader, as writing seldom does, 
into closest contact with nature, making him 
see its sights, hear its sounds, and feel its very 
breath upon his cheek. 

Thoreau seems deliberately to have chosen 
nature rather than man for his companion, 
though he knew well the higher value of man, 
as appears from such passages as the following: 
^^ The blue sky is a distant reflection of the azure 
serenity that looks out from under a human 
brow." "To attain to a true relation to one 
human creature is enough to make a year mem- 
orable." And somewhere he says in substance, 
"What is the singing of birds or any natural 
sound compared with the voice of one we love ? " 
Friendship was one of his favorite themes, and 
no one has written with a finer appreciation of 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE vii 

it. Still, in ordinary society, he found it so 
difficult to reach essential humanity through the 
civilized and conventional that he turned to 
nature, who was ever ready to meet his highest 
mood. From the haunts of business and the 
common intercourse of men he went into the 
woods and fields as from a solitary desert into 
society. He might have said with another, — 
he did virtually say, — "If we go solitary to 
streams and mountains, it is to meet man there 
where he is more than ever man." 

But while I have sought in these selections to 
represent the progressive life of nature, I have 
also been careful to give Thoreau's thoughts, 
because, thou&^h his personality is in a striking: 

conversation, letters, books, and the details of 
his life, though his observation is imbedded in 
his philosophy ("how to observe is how to be- 
have," etc.), yet if any distinction may be made, 
his thoughts or philosophy seem to me incom« 
parably the more interesting and important. 

He declined from the first to live for the com- 
mon prizes of society, for wealth or even what 
is called a competence, for professional, social, 
political, or even literary success; and this not 
from a want of ambition or a purpose, but from 
an ambition far higher than the ordinary, which 
fully possessed him, — an ambition to obey his 



viii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

purest instincts, to follow implicitly the finest 
intimations of his genius, to secure thus the full- 
est and freest life of which he was capable. He 
chose to lay emphasis on his relations to nature 
and the universe rather than on those he bore to 
the ant-hill of society, not to be merely another 
wheel in the social machine. He felt that the 
present is only one among the possible forms of 
civilization, and so preferred not to commit him- 
self to it. Herein lies the secret of that love of 
the wild which was so prominent a trait in his 
character. 

It is evident that the main object of society 
now is to provide for our material wants, and 
still more and more luxuriously for them, while 
the higher wants of our nature are made second- 
ary, put off for some Sunday service and future 
leisure. A great lesson of Thoreau's life is that 
all this must be reversed, that whatever relates 
to the supply of inferior wants must be simpli- 
fied, in order that the higher life may be en- 
riched, though he desired no servile imitation 
of his own methods, for perhaps the highest 
lesson of all to be learnt from him is that the 
only way of salvation lies in the strictest fidelity 
to one's own genius. 

A late English reviewer, who shows in many 
respects a very just appreciation of Thoreau, 
charges him with doing little beyond writing a 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix 

few books, as if that might not be a great thing; 
but a life so steadily directed from the first 
toward the highest ends, gaining as the fruits of 
its fideUty such a harvest of sanity, strength, 
and tranquillity, and that wealth of thought 
which has been well called ^^the only conceivable 
prosperiiy," accompanied, too, as it naturally 
was, with the earnest and effective desire to 
conmiunicate itself to others, — such a life is 
the worthiest deed a man can perform, the purest 
benefit he can confer upon his fellows, compared 
with which all special acts of service or philan- 
thropy are trivial. 

H. G. O. Blake. 

February, 1881. 

It will be seen that in this new edition of the 
present volume have been inserted those passaees 

of April, which had appeared in "The Atlantic 
Monthly " for April, 1878, and which had been 
omitted here by mistake. 

H. G. O. B. 

Octiiber, 1893. 



NOTE ON THE PORTRAIT 

The portrait which prefaces this volume is from 
a daguerreotype taken hy Moxham, in Worcester, 
Massachusetts. Mr. W. E. Channing has given a 
description of Thoreau when in his vigor, which may 
be read as an accompaniment to this portrait. 

** In height, he was about the average ; in his build, 
spare, with limbs that were rather longer than usual, or 
of which he made a longer use. His face, once seen, 
could not be forgotten. The features were quite marked : 
the nose aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits 
of CsBsar (more like a beak, as was said) ; large, over- 
hanging brows above the deepest-set blue eyes that could 
be seen, in certain lights, and in others gray, — eyes ex- 
pressive of all kinds of feeling, but never weak or near- 
sighted ; the forehead not unusually broad or high, full 
of concentrated energy and purpose ; the mouth with 
prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought 
when silent, and giving out when open a stream of the 
most varied and unusual and instructive sayings. His 
hair was a dark brown, exceedingly abundant, fine, and 
soft ; and for several years he wore a comely beard. His 
whole figure had an active earnestness, as if he had no 
moment to waste. The clenched hand betokened purpose. 
In walking, he made a short out if he could, and when 
sitting in the shade or by the wall-«ide seemed merely the 
clearer to look forward into the next piece of activity. 
Even in the boat he had a wary, transitory air, his eyes 
on the outlook — perhaps there might be ducks, or the 
Blondin turtle, or an otter, or sparrow.** 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 



February 24, 1852. p. m. Railroad cause- 
way. I am reminded of spring by the quality 
of the air. The cock-crowing and even the 
telegraph harp prophesy it, though the ground 
is for the most part covered with snow. It is 
a natural resurrection, an experience of inunor- 
tality. • • • The telegraph harp reminds me of 
Anacreon. That is the glory of Greece, that 
we are reminded of her only when in our best 
estate, — our elysian days, — when our senses 
are young and healthy again. I could find a 
name for every strain or intonation of the harp 
from one or other of the Grecian bards. I 
often hear Mimnermus ; often, Menander. 

I am too late by a day or two for the sand 
foliage on the east side of the Deep Cut. It is 
glorious to see the soil again here where a 
shovel perchance will enter it and find no frost. 
The frost is partly come out of this bank, and 
it has become dry again in the sun. The very 
sound of men's work reminds, advertises, me 
of the coming of spring, as I now hear the 



2 EARL Y SPRING IN MASS A CHUSETTS 

laborer's sledge on the rails. . . . As we grow 
older, is it not ominous that we have more to 
write about evening, less about morning? We 
must associate more with the early hours. 

February 24, 1854. p. M. To Walden and 
Fair Haven. Nuthatches are faintly answering 
each other, tit for tat, on different keys — a 
faint creak. Now and then one utters a loud, 
distinct quah. This bird, more than any other 
I know, loves to stand with its head downward ; 
meanwhile, chickadees, with their silver tink- 
ling, are flitting high above through the tops of 
the pines. . . . Observed in one of the Httle 
pond holes between Walden and Fair Haven 
where a partridge had traveled around in the 
snow, amid the bordering bushes, twenty-five 
rods; had pecked the green leaves of the lamb- 
kill, and left fragments on the snow, and had 
paused at each high blueberry bush, and shaken 
down fragments of its bark on the snow. The 
buds appeared to be its main object. I finally 
scared the bird. 

February 24, 1855. The brightening of the 
willow or of osiers, that is a season in the 
spring, showing that the dormant sap is awak- 
ened. I now remember a few osiers which I 
have seen early in past springs, thus brilliantly 
green or red, and it is as if all the landscape 
shone. Though the twigs were few that I saw. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 8 

I remember it as a prominent phenomenon 
affecting the face of Nature, a gladdening of 
her face. You will often fancy that they look 
brighter before the spring has come, and when 
there has been no change in them. Thermome- 
ter at 10"^ at 10 p. M. 

February 24, 1857. A fine spring morning. 
The ground is almost completely bare again. 
There has been a frost in the night. Now at 
half past eight it is melted and wets my feet 
like a dew. The water on the meadow this still 
bright morning is smooth as in April. I am 
surprised to hear the strain of a song-sparrow 
from the river side, and as I cross from the 
causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, 
I that instant hear one's note from deep in the 
softened air. It is already 40°. By noon it is 
between 50° and 60°. As the day advances I 
hear more bluebirds, and see their azure flakes 
settling on the fence posts. Their short rich 
warble curls through the air. Its grain now 
lies parallel to the bluebird's warble, like boards 
of the same lot. It seems to be one of those 
early springs of which we have heard, but which 
we have never experienced. 

I have seen the probings of skunks for a week 
or more. I now see where one has pawed out 
the worn dust or chankings from a hole in the 
base of a walnut, and torn open the fungi, etc.. 



a -~ 



i «' 



•i •:> 



.i.-r 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSA CHUSETTS 6 

It is a convenient expression for whicb I think 
we have no equivalent. 

February 24, 1858. I see rhodora in bloom 
in a pitcher with water andromeda* Went 
through that long swamp northeast of Boaz's 
Meadow. Interesting and pecnliar are the 
clumps and masses of panicled andrcmieda, with 
light brown stems, topped imiformly with very 
distinct, yellow-brown recent shoots, ten or 
twelve inches long, with minute red buds sleep- 
ing close along them. TWs uniformity in soeh 
masses gives a pleasing tinge to the swamp's 
surface. Wholesome colors which wear well. 
I see quite a number of emperor moths' cocoons 
attached to this shrub, some hung round with 
a loose mass of leaves as big as my two fists. 
What art in the red-eye to make these two 
adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its 
pensile basket, inweaving them ! Surely it finds 
a place for itself in nature, between the two 
twigs of a maple. 

On the side of the meadow moraine, just 
north of the boulder field, I see barberry bushes 
three inches in diameter and ten feet high. 
What a surprising color this wood has. It 
splits and splinters very much when 1 bend it. 
I cut a cane, and, shaving off the outer bark, 
find it of imperial yellow, as if painted, — fit 
for a Chinese mandarin. 



6 EARLY SPRING IN MASSA CHUSETTS 

February 25, 1859. Measure your health 
by your sympathy with morning and spring. 
If there is no response in you to the awakening 
of nature, if the prospect of an early morning 
walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the 
first bluebird does not thrill you, know that the 
morning and spring of your life are past. Thus 
may you feel your pulse. 

I heard this morning a nuthatch in the elms 
on the street. I think they are heard oftener 
at the approax5h of spring, just as the phebe 
note of the chickadee is, and so their quah quah 
is a herald of the spring. 

A good book is not made in the cheap and 
off-hand manner of many of our scientific 
reports, ushered in by the message of the Presi- 
dent communicating it to Congress, and the 
order of Congress that many thousand copies be 
printed with the letters of instruction from the 
Secretary of the Interior (or rather exterior); 
the bulk of the book being a journal of a picnic 
or sporting expedition by a brevet lieutenant- 
colonel, illustrated by photographs of the trav- 
eler's footsteps across the plains, and an ad- 
mirable engraving of his native village as it 
appeared on his leaving it, and followed by an 
appendix on the paleontology of the route by 
a distinguished savant who was not there ; the 
last illustrated by very finely executed engrav* 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 7 

ings of some old broken shells picked up on the 
road. 

There are several men of whose comings and 
goings the town knows little, — I mean the 
trappers. They may be seen coming from the 
woods and river, perhaps with nothing in their 
hands, and you do not suspect what they have 
been about. They go about their business in a 
stealthy manner for fear that any should see 
where they set their traps, for the fur-trade still 
flourishes here. Every year they visit the out- 
of-the-way swamps and meadows and brooks to 
set and examine their traps for musquash and 
mink, and the owners of the land commonly 
know nothing of it. But few as the trappers 
are here, it seems by Goodwin's accounts that 
they steal one another's traps. 

All the criticism I got on my lecture on 
"Autumnal Tints," at Worcester, on the 22d, 
I was that I presumed my audience had not seen 
so much of them as they had. But after read- 
ing it I am more than ever convinced that they 
have not seen much of them, that there are very 
\^ew persons who do see much of nature. 

February 25, 1860. The fields of open 
water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the 
spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue 
when I look southwest. Has it anything to do 
with the direction of the wind? It is pleasant 



\ 



\ 



8 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

to see high, dark blue waves half a mile off, 
running incessantly along the edge of white ice. 
There the motion of the blue liquid is the most 
distinct. As the waves rise and fall they seem 
to run swiftly along the edge of the ice. 

For a day or two past I have seen in various 
places the small tracks of skunks. They appear 
to come out conunonly in the warmer weather 
in the latter part of February. 

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous sil- 
very sheen from the needles of the white pine 
waving in the wind. A small one was conspic- 
uous by the side of the road, more than a quar- 
ter of a mile ahead. I suspect that those 
plumes which have been oppressed or contracted 
by snow and ice are not only dried, but opened 
and spread by the wind. 

Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time 
ago, and still see, made in slosh, and since 
frozen at the andromeda ponds, I think must 
be mole tracks, and those ^' nicks" on the sides 
are where they shoved back the snow with their 
vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, 
a broad channel in slosh and at length in ice. 

February 26, 1840. The most important 
events make no stir on their first taking place, 
nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem 
hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion or 
the rushing together of air to fill a vacuimi 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 9 

which makes a noise. The great events to 
which all things consent, and for which they 
have prepared the way, produce no explosion, 
for they are gradual, and create no vacuum 
which requires to be filled. As a birth takes 
place in silence, and is whispered about the 
neighborhood, but an assassination, which is at 
war with the constitution of things, creates a 
tumult immecHately. 

February 26, 1841. My prickles or smooth- 
ness are as much a quality of your hand as of 
myself. I cannot tell you what I am more 
than a ray of the summer's sun. What I am, 
I am, and say not. Being is the great ex- 
plainer. In the attempt to explain, shall I 
plane away all the spines till it is no thistle, 
but a cornstalk? 

If my world is not sufficient without thee, 
my friend, I will wait till it is, and then call 
thee. You shall come to a palace, not to an 
almshouse. 

To be great we do as if we would be tall 
merely, longer than we are broad, stretch our- 
selves and stand on tiptoe. But greatness is 
well-proportioned, unstrained, and stands on 
the soles of the feet. 

In composition I miss the hue of the mind, 
as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the 
morning and evening without their colors, or 



10 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

the heavens without their azure. This good 
book helps the sun shine in my chamber. The 
rays fall on its page as if to explain and illus- 
trate it. I, who have been sick, hear cattle 
low in the street with such a healthy ear as pro- 
phesies my cure. These sounds lay a finger 
on my pulse to some purpose. A fragrance 
comes in at all my senses which proclaims that 
I am still of nature, the child. The threshing 
in yonder bam and the tinkling of the anvil 
come from the same side of Styx with me. If 
I were a physician I would try my patients 
thus: I would wheel them to a window and let 
nature feel their pulses. It will soon appear 
if their sensuous existence is sound. These 
sounds are but the throbbing of some pulse in 
me. Nature seems to have given me these 
hours to pry into her private drawers. I watch 
the insensible perspiration rising from my coat 
or hand on the wall. I go and feel my pulse 
in all the recesses of the house, and see if I am 
of force to carry a homely life and comfort into 
them. 

February 26, 1852. We are told to-day 
that civilization is making rapid progress; the 
tendency is ever upward, substantial justice is 
done even by human courts. You may trust 
the good intentions, of mankind. We read to- 
morrow in the newspapers that France is on the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 11 

eve of going to war with England to give em- 
ployment to her army. This Russian war is 
popular. What is the influence of men of prin- 
ciple? or how numerous are they? How many 
moral teachers has society? Of course so many 
as she has will resist her. How many resist 
her? How many have I heard speak with 
warning voice? The preacher's standard of 
morality is no higher than that of his audience. 
He studies to conciliate his hearers, and never 
to offend them. Does the threatened war be- 
tween France and England evince any more 
enlightenment than a war between two savage 
tribes, the Iroquois and Hurons? Is it founded 
in better reason? 

February 26, 1855. Directly off Clam-shell 
HiU, within four rods of it, where the water is 
three or four feet deep, I see where the mus- 
quash dived and brought up clams before the 
last freezing. Their open ahells are strewn 
along close to the edge of the ice, and close to- 
gether for about three rods in one place, and 
the bottom under the edge of the older ice, as 
seen through the new black ice, is perfectly 
white with those which sank. They may have 
been blown in, or the ice may have melted. 
The nacre of these freshly opened shells is very 
fair, azure, or else a delicate salmon pink (?), 
or rosaceous, or violet. I find one not opened. 



12 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

but frozen, and several have one valve quite 
broken in two in the rat's effort to wrench them 
open, leaving the frozen fish half exposed. All 
the rest show the marks of their teeth at one 
end or the other. You can see distinctly also 
the marks of their teeth where with a scraping 
cut they have scraped off the tough muscle 
which fastens the fish to its sheU, also sometimes 
all along the nacre next the edge. . . . These 
shells lie thickly around the edge of each small 
circle of thinner black ice in the midst of the 
white, showing where was open water a day or 
two ago. At the begimxing and end of winter, 
when the river is partly open, the ice thus 
serves the muskrat instead of other stool. . . . 
Hence it appears that this is still a good place 
for clams as it was in Indian days. 

February 26, 1857. What an accursed land, 
methinks unfit for the habitation of man, where 
the wild animals are monkeys I 

February 27, 1841. Life looks as fair at 
this moment as a summer's sea . . . like a Per- 
sian city or hanging gardens in the distance, so 
washed in light, so untried, only to be thridded 
by clean thoughts. All its flags are flowing 
and tassels streaming, and drapery flapping like 
some pavilion. The heavens hang over it like 
some low screen, and seem to undulate in the 
breeze. Through this pure, unwiped hour, as 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS IE 

through a crystal glass, I look out upon the fu- 
ture as a smooth lawn for my virtue to disport 
in. It shows from afar as unrepulsive as the 
sunshine upon walls and cities, over which the 
passing life moves as gently as a shadow. I 
see the course of my life, like some retired road, 
wind on without obstruction into a country 
maze. I am attired for the future so, as the 
sun setting presumes all men at leisure and in 
contemplative mood, and am thankful that it is 
thus presented blank and indistinct. It still 
o'ertops my life. My future deeds bestir them- 
selves within me and move grandly towards a 
consummation, as ships go down the Thames. 
A steady onward motion I feel in me as still 
as that, or like some vast snowy cloud whose 
shadow first is seen across the filds. It is the 
material of all things, loose and set afloat, that 
makes my sea. 

These various words are not without various 
meanings. The combined voice of the tb^q 
makes nicer distinctions than any individual. 
There are the words diversion and amusement. 
It takes more to amuse than to divert. We 
must be surrendered to our amusements, but 
only turned aside to our diversions. We have 
no will in the former, but oversee the latter. 
We are oftenest diverted in the street, but 
amused in our chambers. We are diverted 



14 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

from our engagements, but amused when we are 
listless. We may be diverted from an amuse- 
ment, and amused by a diversion. It often 
liappens that a diversion becomes our amuse- 
ment, and an amusement our employment. 

February 27, 1851. Of two men, one of 
whom knows nothing about a subject, and, what 
is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, 
and the other really knows something about it, 
but thinks that he knows all, what great advan- 
tage has the latter over the former? which is 
the better to deal with? I do not know that 
knowledge amounts to anything more definite 
than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden 
revelation of the insufficiency of all we had 
oaUed knowledge before, an indefinite sense of 
the grandeur and glory of the universe. It is 
a lighting up of the mist by the sun. But man 
cannot be said to know, in the highest sense, 
any better than he can look serenely and with 
impunity in the face of the sun. 

How when a man purchases a thing, he is 
determined to get and get hold of it, using how 
many expletives and how long a string of syn- 
onymous or similar terms signifying possession 
in the legal process. What 's mine 's my own. 
An old deed of a small piece of swamp land, 
which I have lately surveyed at the risk of 
being mired past recovery, says that *^the said 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 15 

Spaulding, his heirs and assigns, shall and may 
from this (?) time, and at all times forever here- 
after, by force and virtue of these presents, 
lawfully, peaceably, and quietly have, hold, 
use, occupy, possess, and enjoy the said 
swamp," etc. 

The following bears on the floating ice which 
has risen from the bottom of the meadows. 
Robert Hunt says, ^^ Water conducts heat 
downward but very slowly; a mass of ice wiU 
remain undissolved but a few inches imder 
water on the surface of which ether or any 
other inflammable body is burning. If ice 
swam beneath the surface the summer sun 
would scarcely have power to thaw it, and thus 
our lakes and seas would be gradually converted 
inte solid masses." 

Nature and man; some prefer one, others 
the other. But that is all ^^de gnstibus." It 
makes no odds at what well you drink, provided 
it be «. well-head. 

Walking in the woods, it may be some after- 
noon, the shadow of the wingjs of a thought flits 
across the landscape of my mind, and I am 
reminded how little eventful are our lives. 
What have been all these wars and rumors of 
wars, and modem discoveries and improve- 
ments, so called? A mere irritation in the 
skin. But this shadow which is so soon past. 



16 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

and whose substance is not detected, suggests 
that there are events of importance whose inter- 
val is to us a true historic period. 

The lecturer is wont to describe the nine- 
teenth century, the American of the last gener- 
ation, in an off-hand and triumphant strain, 
wafting him to Paradise, spreading his fame by 
steam and telegraph, recounting the number of 
wooden stopples he has whittled. But he does 
not perceive that this is not a sincere or perti- 
nent account of any man's or nation's life. It 
is the hip-hip-hurrah and mutual admiration 
society style. Cars go by and we know their 
substance as well as their shadow I They stop 
and we get into them. But those sublime 
thoughts, passing on high, do not stop, and we 
never get into them. Their conductor is not 
like one of us. 

I feel that the man who, in his conversation 
with me about the life of man in New England, 
lays much stress on railroads, telegraphy and 
such enterprises does not go below the surface 
of things. ... In one of the mind's avatars, 
in the interval between sleeping and waking, 
ay, in one of the interstices of a Hindoo dy- 
i^^ty, perchance, such things as the nineteenth 
century, with all its improvements, may come 
and go again. Nothing makes a deep and last- 
ing impression but what is weighty. • • . He 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 17 

who lives according to the highest law is in one 
sense lawless. That is an unfortunate discov- 
ery, certainly, that of a law which binds us 
where we did not know that we were bound. 
Live free, child of the mist. He for whom the 
law is made, who does not obey the law, but 
whom the law obeys, reclines on pillows of 
down, and is wafted at will whither he pleases; 
for man is superior to all laws, both of heaven 
and earth, when he takes his liberty. 

Fd)raary 27, 1852. The main river is not 
yet open except in very few places, but the 
north branch, which is so much more rapid, is 
open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I 
walked to-day, and flowing with full tide, bor- 
dered with ice on either side, sparkles in the 
clear, cool air, — a silvery sparkle as from a 
stream that would not soil the sky. . . . We 
have almost completely forgotten the summer. 
This restless and now swollen stream has burst 
its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it 
westward for half a mile, where it winds slightly 
under a high bank, its surface is lit up here 
and there with a fine-grained silyery sparUe 
which makes the river appear something celes- 
tial, more than a terrestrial river, which might 
have suggested that one surrounding the shield 
in Homer. If rivers come out of their prison 
thus bright and immortal, shall not I, too, re- 



18 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

sume my spring life with joy and hope? Have 
I no hopes to sparkle on the surface of life's 
current? It is worth while to have our faith 
revived by seeing where a river swells and 
eddies about a half -buried rock. 

February 27, 1853. A week or two ago 1 
brought home a handsome pitch pine cone, 
which had freshly fallen, and was closed per- 
fectly tight. It was put into a table-drawer. 
To-day I am agreeably surprised that it has 
there dried and opened with perfect regularity, 
filling the drawer; and from a solid, narrow 
and sharp cone has become a broad, rounded, 
open one, — has, in fact, expanded into a coni- 
cal flower with rigid scales, and has shed a 
remarkable quantity of delicate winged seeds. 
Each scale, which is very elaborately and per- 
fectly constructed, is armed with a short spine 
pointing downward, as if to protect its seeds 
from squirrels and birds. That hard, closed 
cone, which defied all violent attempts to open 
it, and could only be cut open, has thus yielded 
to the gentle persuasion of warmth and dryness. 
The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is 
a season. 

February 27, 1854. ... I remarked yester- 
day the rapidity with which water flowing over 
the icy ground sought its level. All that rain 
would hardly have produced a puddle in mid- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 19 

summer, but now it produces a f reahet, and will 
perhaps break up the river. 

February 27, 1856. The papers are talking 
about the prospect of war between England and 
America. Neither side sees how its country 
can avoid a long and fratricidal war without 
sacrificing its honor. Both nations are ready 
to take a desperate step, to forget the interests 
of civilization and Christianity and their com- 
mercial prosperity, and fly at each other's 
throats. When I see an individual thus beside 
himself, thus desperate, ready to shoot or be 
shot like a blackleg, who has little to lose, no 
serene aims to accomplish, I think he is a can- 
didate for bedlam. What asylum is there for 
nations to go to ? 

Nations are thus ready to talk of wars and 
challenge one another because they are made 
up, to such an extent, of poor, low-spirited, 
despairing men, in whose eyes the chance of 
shooting somebody else, without being shot 
themselves, exceeds their actual good fortune* 
Who, in fact, jsdll be the first to enlist but the 
most desperate class, they who have lost all 
hope? And they may at last infect the rest* 
Will not war, at length, be thought disreputa- 
ble, like dueling between individuals? 

February 27, 1857. Before I opened the 
wmdow this cold morning I heard the peep of a 



20 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

robin, that sound wlueh is often heard in cheer- 
less or else rainy weather, so often heard first 
borne on the cutting March wind, or through 
sleet or rain, as if its coming were prematore. 

Ffbruary 27, 1858. . . . The hedges on the 
hill are all cot off. The joomals think they 
cannot say too much on improTements in hus- 
bandry. But as for one of these farms brushed 
up, — a model farm, — I had as lief see a 
patent chum and a man turning it. It is sim- 
ply a place where somebody is malring money. 

I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant 
and warm. 

February 27, 1859. p. m. To Cliffs; 
though it was a dry, powdery snow storm yes- 
terday, the sun is now so high that the snow 
is soft and sticky this p. M. The sky, too, is 
soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek. 

Health makes the poet, or sympathy with 
nature, a good appetite for his food, which is 
constantly renewing him, — whetting his senses. 
Pay for your victuals then with poetry, give 
back life ior life. 

February 27, 1860. 2 p. m. To Abner 
Buttrick's Hill. ... I walk down by the river 
below Flint's, on the north side. The sudden 
apparition of the dark blue water on the surface 
of the earth is exciting. I must now walk 
where I can see the most water, as to the most 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 21 

living part of nature. This is the blood of the 
earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with 
new life now. I see from far over the meadows 
white cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the 
stream, — a novel sight. They are whiter than 
ever in this spring sun. 

The abundance of light, as reflected from 
clouds and the snow, etc., etc., is more spring- 
like than anything else of late. . . ^. I had 
noticed for some time, far in the middle of the 
great meadows, something dazzling white, which 
I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on 
its end ; but now that I have climbed the pitch 
pine hill, and can overlook the whole meadow, 
I see it to be the white breast of a small shel- 
drake, accompanied, perhaps, by its mate, a 
darker one. They have settled warily in the 
very midst of the meadow, where the wind has 
blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. 
The aspect of the meadow is sky blue and dark 
blue, the former a thin ice, the latter the spaces 
of open water which the wind has made ; but it 
is chiefly ice still. Thus as soon as the river 
breaks up, or begins to break up fairly, and the 
strong wind, widening the cracks, makes at 
length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, 
this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in 
the first widened crack in the ice where it can 
come at the water. Instead of a piece of ice I 



22 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

find it to be the breast of the sheldrake which 
so reflects the light as to look larger than it is, 
the bird steadily sailing this way and that with 
its companion, who is diving from time to time. 
They have chosen the opening farthest removed 
from all shores. As I look I see the ice drift- 
ing in upon them and contracting the water, 
till finally they have but a few square rods left, 
while there are forty or fifty acres near by. 
This is the first bird of the spring that I have 
seen or heard of. 

February 28, 1841. Nothing goes by luck 
in composition ; it allows of no trick. The best 
you can write will be the best you are. Every 
sentence is the result of a long probation. The 
author's character is read from title-page to 
end. Of this he never corrects the proofs. 
We read it as the essential character of a hand- 
writing without regard to the flourishes. And 
so of the rest of our actions. It runs as 
straight as a nded line through them all, no 
matter how many curvets about it. Our whole 
life is taxed for the least thing well done. It 
is its net result. How we eat, drink, sleep, 
and use our desultory hours now in these indif- 
ferent days, with no eye to observe and no 
occasion to excite us, determines our authority 
and capacity for the time to come. 

February 28, 1852. To-day it snows again. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 23 

covering the ground. To get the value of the 
storm, we must be out a long time and travel 
far in it, so that it may fairly penetrate our 
skin, and we be, as it were, turned inside out 
to it, and there be no part in us but is wet or 
weather-beaten, so that we become storm men, 
instead of fair-weather men. Some men speak 
of having been wet to the skin once as a memo- 
rable event in their lives, which, notwithstand- 
ing the croakers, they survived. 

F^niary 28, 1855. I observed how a new 
ravine was formed in that last thaw at Clam- 
shell Hill. Much melted snow and rain being 
collected on the top of the hill, some apparently 
found its way through the girouud frozen a foot 
thick, a few feet from the edge of the bank, 
and began with a small riU washing down the 
slope the unfrozen sand beneath. As the water 
continued to flow, the sand on each side contin- 
ued to slide into it and be carried off, leaving 
the frozen crust above quite firm, making a 
bridge five or six feet wide over this cavern. 
Now since the ihaw, this bridge, I see, has 
melted and fallen in, leaving a ravine some ten 
feet wide and much longer, which now may go 
on increasing from year to year without limit. 
I was there just after it began. 

February 28, 1856. How simple the ma- 
chinery of a saw-mill. M has dammed a 



24 EARL Y SPRING IN MA SSA CHUSETTS 

stream, raised a pond or head of water, and 
placed an old horizontal mill-wheel in position 
to receive a jet on its buckets, transferred the 
motion to a horizontal shaft and saw, by a few 
cog-wheels and simple gearing ; then throwing a 
roof of slabs over all, at the outlet of the pond, 
you have a mill. ... A weight of water stored 
upon a meadow, applied to move a saw, which 
scratches its way through the trees placed be- 
fore it, so simple is a saw-mill. 

February 28, 1857. It is a singular infat- 
uation that leads men to become clergymen in 
regular or even irregular standing. I pray to 
be introduced to new men at whom I may stop 
short and taste their peculiar sweetness. But 
in the clergyman of the most liberal sort I see 
no perfectly independent human nucleus, but I 
seem to see some indistinct scheme hovering 
about, to which he has lent himself, to which he 
belongs. It is a very fine cobweb in the lower 
stratum of the air, which stronger wings do not 
even discover. Whatever he may say, he does 
not know that one day is as good as another. 
Whatever he may say, he does not know that a 
man's creed can never be written, that there are 
no particular expressions of worship that de- 
serve to be prominent. He dreams of a certain 
sphere to be filled by him something less in 
diameter than a great circle, may be not greater 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 25 

than a hogshead. All the staves are got out^ 
and his sphere is already hooped. What 's the 
use of talking to him? When you spoke of 
sphere music, he thought only of a thumping on 
his cask. If he does not know something that 
nobody else does, that nobody told him, then 
he 's a tell-tale. 

February 28, 1860. Passed a very little boy 
in the street to-day who had on a home-made 
cap of a woodchuck's skin, which his father or 
older brother had killed and cured, and his 
mother or older sister had fashioned into a nice 
warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, 
it suggested so much of family history, adven- 
ture with the animal, story told about it, not 
without exaggeration, the human parents, care 
of their young these hard times. Johnny had 
been promised a cap many times, and now the 
work was completed. A perfect little Idyl, as 
they say. The cap was large and round, big 
enough, you would say, for the boy's father, 
and had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. 
The top of the cap was evidently the back of 
the woodchuck, as it were, expanded in breadth, 
contracted in length, and it was as fresh and 
handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himseK. 
The great gray-tipped hairs were all preserved 
and stood out above the brown ones, only a lit- 
tle more loosely than in life. As if he had put 



26 EARL Y SPRING IN MASSA CHUSETTS 

his head into the belly of a woodehuek, having 
cut off his tail and legs, and substituted a visor 
for the head. The little fellow wore it inno- 
cently enough, not knowing what he had on 
forsooth, going about his small business pit- 
a-pat, and his black eyes sparkled beneath it 
when I remarked on its warmth, even as the 
woodchuck's might have done. Such should 
be the history of every piece of clothing that 
we wear. 

As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a 
fine rattling sound from some dry seeds at my 
elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling 
the fine seeds in those pods of the Indigo weed 
which were still closed, a distinct rattling din 
which drew my attention, like a small Indian 
calabash. Not a mere rattling of dry seeds, 
but the shaking of a rattle or a hundred rat- 
Dies. ... 

As it is important to consider nature from 
the point of view of science, remembering the 
nomenclature and systems of men, and so, if 
possible, go a step further in that direction, so 
it is equally important often to ignore or forget 
all that men presume that they know, and take 
an original and unprejudiced viev.'' of Nature, 
letting her make what impression she will on 
you, as the first men, and all children, and 
natural men do. For our science, so called, is 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 27 

always more barren and mixed with error than 
our sympathies are. 

As I go down the Boston road I see an Irish- 
man wheeling home from far a large, damp, 
and rotten pine log for fuel. He evidently 
sweats at it and pauses to rest many times. 
He found, perhaps, that his woodpUe was gone 
before the winter was, and he trusts thus to 
contend with the remaining cold. I see him 
unload it in his yard before me, and then rest 
himself. The piles of solid oak wood which I 
see in other yards do not interest me at all, but 
this looked like fuel. It warmed me to think 
of it. He will now proceed to split it finely, and 
then I fear it will require about as much heat to 
dry it as it will give out at last. How rarely 
we are encouraged by the sight of simple 
actions in the street. We deal with banks and 
other institutions where the life and humanity 
are concealed, what there is of it. I like at 
least to see the great beams half exposed in the 
ceiling or the comer. 

February 28, 1861. p. m. Down Boston 
road under the hill. Air full of bluebirds, as 
yesterday. The sidewalk is bare and almost 
dry the whole distance under the hill. Turn 
in at the gate this side of Moore's, and sit 
on one of the yellowish stones rolled down in 
the bay of a digging, and examine the radical 



28 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

leaves, etc., etc. Where the edges of grassy 
banks have caved I see the fine fibrous roots of 
the grass, which have been washed bare daring 
the winter, extending straight downward two 
feet (and how much further within the earth I 
know not), a pretty dense, grayish mass. 

February 29, 1840. A friend advises by 
his whole behavior, and never condescends to 
particulars. Another chides away a fault; he 
loves it away. While he sees the other's error, 
he is silently conscious of it, and only the more 
loves truth itself, and assists his friend in lov- 
ing it till the fault is expelled and gently extin- 
guished. 

February 29, 1852. Simplicity is the law 
of nature for men as well as for flowers. 
When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed 
(caljrx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproduc- 
tive. Linnaeus says, "Luxuriant flowers are 
none natural, but all monsters," and so, for 
the most part, abortive, and when proliferous 
"they but increase the monstrous deformity." 
"Luxurians flos tegmenta fructificationis ita 
multiplicat ut essentiales equidem partes destru- 
antur." "Oritur luxurians flos plerumque ab 
alimento luxuriante." Such a flower has no 
true progeny, and can only be reproduced by 
the humble mode of cuttings from its stem or 
roots. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 29 

"Anthophilorum et hortulanorum deliciaa 
sunt flores pleni," not of nature. The fertile 
flowers are single, not double. 

p. M. To Pine Hill across Walden. The 
high wind takes off the oak leaves. I see them 
scrambling up the slopes of the Deep Cut, 
hurry scurry like a flock of ^uirrels. . . . For 
the past month there has been more sea-room 
in the day, without so great danger of running 
aground on one of those two promontories that 
make it so arduous to navigate the winter day, 
the morning or the evening. It is a narrow 
pass, and you must go through with the tide. 
Might not some of my pages be called the short 
days of winter ? 

From Pine Hill looking westward I see the 
snow-crust shine in the sun as far as the eye 
can reach, — snow which fell yesterday morn- 
ing. Then before night came the rain, then 
in the night the freezing northwest wind, and 
where day before yesterday half the ground was 
bare, is this sheeny snow-crust to-day. 

March 1, 1838. Spring. March fans it, 
April christens it, and May puts on its jacket 
and trousers. It never grows up, but, Alexan- 
drine-like, "drags its slow length along," — . 
ever springing, bud following close upon leaf, 
— and when winter comes it is not annihilated, 
but creeps on mole-like under the snow, show- 



80 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

ing its face, nevertheless, occasionally by fum- 
ing springs and wateroonrses. So let onr man- 
hood be a more advanced and still advancing 
youth, bud following hard upon leaf. By the 
side of the ripening com let's have a second 
or third crop of peas and turnips, decking the 
fields in a new green. So amid clumps of sere 
herd's-grass sometimes flower the violet and 
buttercups, spring-bom. 

March 1, 1842. Whatever I learn from 
any circumstance, that especially I needed to 
know. Events come out of God, and our char- 
acters determine them and constrain fate as 
much as they determine the words and tone of 
a friend to us. Hence are they always accepta- 
ble in experience, and we do not see how we 
could have done without them. 

March 1, 1854. Here is our first spring 
morning according to the almanac. It is re- 
markable that the spring of the almanac and 
of nature should correspond so closely. The 
morning of the 26th ult. was good winter; but 
then came a plentiful rain in the afternoon, 
and yesterday and to-day are quite spring-like. 
This morning the air is still, and, though clear 
enough, a yellowish light is widely diffused 
through the east now, just after sunrise. The 
sunlight looks and feels warm, and a fine vapor 
fills the lower atmosphere. I hear the phebe 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 31 

or spring note of the chickadee, and the scream 
of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from, 
a neighboring wood. For some days past the 
surface of the earth, covered with water or with 
ice where the snow is washed off, has shone in 
the sun as it does only at the approach of 
spring, methinks, a^d are not the frosts in Hie 
morning more like the early frosts in the fall, 
— common white frosts? As for the birds of 
the past winter, I have seen but three hawks, 
one early in the winter, two lately; have heard 
the hooting owl pretty often late in the after- 
noon. Crows have not been numerous, but 
their cawing was heard chiefly in the pleasanter 
mornings. Blue-jays have blown the trumpet 
of winter as usual, but they, as all birds, are 
most lively in spring-like days. The chicka- 
dees have been the prevailing bird. The par- 
tridge common enough. One ditcher tells me 
that he saw two robins in Moore's swamp a 
month ago. I have not seen a quail, though a 
few have been killed in the thaws, — four or 
five downy woodpeckers. The white-breasted 
nuthatch four or five times. Tree-sparrows, 
one or more at a time, oftener than any bird 
that comes to us from the north. Two pigeon- 
woodpeckers, I think, lately. One dead shrike 
and perhaps pne or two live ones. Have heard 
of two white owls, one about Thanksgiving time 



<^x 



S2 EARLY SPRIXG IX MASSACHUSETTS 

and one in midwinter; one short-eared owl in 
December; several flocks of snow buntings in 
the severest storm in the last part of December; 
one grebe in Walden, jnst before it froze com- 
pletely, and two brown creepers once in the 
middle of February. C says he saw a lit- 
tle olivaceous green bird lately. I have not 
seen a Fringilla linaria^ nor a pine grossbeak, 
nor a Fringilla hiemalis this winter, though the 
first was the prevailing bird last winter. 

In correcting my MSS., which I do with 
sufficient phlegm, I find that I invariably turn 
out much that is good along with the bad, which 
it is then impossible for me to distinguish, — so 
much for keeping bad company; but after a 
lapse of time, having purified the main body 
and thus created a distinct standard for com- 
parison, I can review the rejected sentences, 
and easily detect those which deserve to be 
readmitted. 

p. M. To Walden by R. W. E.'s. I am 
surprised to see how bare Minott's hillside is 
already. It is spring there, and M. is putter- 
ing outside in the sun. How wise in his grand- 
father to select such a site for a house ; the sum - 
mers he has lived there have been so much 
longer. IIow pleasant the calm season and the 
warmth (the sun is even like a burning-glass on 
my back), and the sight and sound of melting 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 33 

snow running down the hiU. I look in among 
the withering grass blades for some starting 
greenness. I listen to hear the first bluebird 
in the soft air. I hear the dry clucking of hens 
which have come abroad. The ice at Walden 
is softened. With a stick you can loosen it to 
the depth of an inch, or the first freezing, and 
turn it up in cakes. Yesterday you could skate 
here, now only close to the south shore. I 
notice the redness of the andromeda leaves, but 
not so much as once. The sand foliage is now 
in its prime. 

March 1, 1855. It is a very pleasant and 
warm day, the finest yet, with considerable cool- 
ness in the air, however. Winter still. The 
air is beautifully clear, and through it I love 
to trace at a distance the roofs and outlines 
of sober-colored farm-houses amid the woods. 
We go listening for bluebirds, but only hear 
crows and chickadees. A fine seething air over 
the fair russet fields. The dusty banks of snow 
by the railroad reflect a wonderfully dazzling 
white from their pure crannies, being melted 
into an uneven, sharp-wavy surface. This more 
dazzling white must be due to the higher sun. 

March 1, 1856. 9 a. m. To Flint's Pond 
via Walden, by railroad and the crust. I hear 
the hens cackle as not before for many months. 
Are they not beginning to lay? The catkins of 



34 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

the willow by the causeway and of the aspens 
appear to have pushed out a little farther than 
a month ago. I see the down of half a dozen 
on that willow by the causeway, on the aspens 
pretty generally. As I go through the cut it is 
still warm, and more or less sunny, spring-like 
(about 40°); and the sand and reddish subsoil 
is bare for about a rod in width on the railroad. 
I hear several times the fine-drawn phebe note 
of the chickadee, which I heard only once dur- 
ing the winter. ... It is remarkable that 
though I have not been able to find any open 
place in the river almost all winter, except un- 
der the further stone bridge and at Loring's 
Pond, this winter so remarkable for ice and 
snow, yet Coombs should (as he says) have 
killed two sheldrakes at the falls of the factory, 
a place which I had forgotten, — some four or 
six weeks ago; singular that this hardy bird 
should have found that small opening which I 
had forgotten, while the ice everywhere else was 
from one to two feet thick, and the snow sixteen 
inches on a level. If there is a crack amid the 
rocks of some waterfall, this bright diver is sure 
to know it. Ask the sheldrake whether the 
rivers are completely sealed up. 

March 1, 1860. I have thoughts, as I walk, 
on some subject that is running in my head, 
but all their pertinence seems gone before I can 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 86 

get home to set them down. The most valuable 
thoughts which I entertain are anything but 
what / thought. Nature abhors a vacuum, and 
if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness, I 
am sure to be filled. 

March 2, 1840. Love is the burden of all 
nature's odes, the song of the birds is an 
epithalamium, a hymeneal. The marriage of 
the flowers spots the meadows and fringes the 
hedges with pearls and diamonds. In the deep 
water, in the high air, in woods and pastures, 
and the bowels of the earth, this is the employ- 
ment and condition of all things. 

March 2, 1852. If the sciences are protected 
from being carried by assault by a palisade or 
chevaux-de-frise of technical terms, so also the 
learned man may ensconce himself and conceal 
his little true knowledge behind hard names. 
Perhaps the value of any statement may be in- 
creased by its susceptibility of being expressed 
in popular language. The greatest discoveries 
can be reported in the newspapers. I thought 
it was a great advantage both to speakers and 
hearers, when, at the meetings of scientific 
gentlemen at the Marlborough Chapel, the 
representatives of one department of science 
were required to speak intelligibly to those of 
other departments ; therefore dispensing with the 
most peculiarly technical terms. A man may 



86 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

be permitted to state a very meagi*e truth to a 
fellow-student using teclinieal terms, but when 
he stands up before the mass of men he must 
have some distinct and important truth to 
communicate, and the most important it will 
always be the most easy to communicate to the 
vulgar. 

If anybody thinks a thought, how sure we are 
to hear of it. Though it be only a half thought 
or half a delusion, it gets into the newspapers, 
and all the country rings with it. But how 
much clearing of land, and ploughing and plant- 
ing, and building of stone wall is done every 
summer without being reported in the newspa- 
pers or in literature. Agricultural literature 
is not as extensive as the fields, and the farmer's 
almanac is never a big book. Yet I think that 
the history (or poetry) of one farm from a state 
of nature to the highest state of cultivation 
comes nearer to being the true subject of a 
modem epic than the siege of Jerusalem or any 
such paltry and ridiculous romance to which 
some have thought men reduced. Was it Cole- 
ridge who said that the "Works and Days" of 
Ilesiod, the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, 
are but leaves out of that epic? The turning 
of a swamp into a garden, though the poet may 
not think it an improvement, is at any rate an 
enterprise interesting to all men. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 37 

A wealthy farmer, who has money to let, was 
here yesterday, who said that fourteen years ago 
a man came to him to hire two hundred dollars 
for thirty days. He told him that he should 
have it if he would give proper security. But 
the other, thinking it exorbitant to require 
security for so short a term, went away. He 
soon returned, however, and gave the security; 
"and," said the farmer, "he has punctually 
paid me twelve dollars a year ever since. I 
have never said a word to him about the prin- 
cipal." 

March 2, 1854. What produces the pecu- 
liar softness of the air yesterday and to-day, as 
if it were the air of the south suddenly pillowed 
amid our wintry hills? We have suddenly a 
different sky, a different atmosphere. It is as 
if the subtlest possible soft vapor were diffused 
through the atmosphere. Warm air has come 
to us from the south, but charged with moisture 
which will yet distill into rain or congeal into 
snow and haU. 

March 2, 1855. Another still, warm, beau- 
tiful day, like yesterday. 9 A. M. To Great 
Meadows to see the ice. These meadows, like 
all the rest, are one great field of ice a foot 
thick, to their utmost verge far up the hillsides 
and into the swamps, sloping upward there, with- 
out water under it, resting almost everywhere 



38 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

on the ground, a great undulating field of ice, 
rolling, prairie-like, the earth wearing this dry 
icy shield or armor, which shines in the sun. 
Over brooks and ditches, perhaps, and in many 
other places, the ice, sometimes a foot thick, is 
shoved (?) or puffed up in the form of a pent 
roof, in some places three feet high and stretch- 
ing twenty or thirty rods. There is certainly 
more ice than could lie flat there, as if the adja- 
cent masses had been moved toward each other. 
Yet this general motion is not likely, and it is 
more probably the result of the expansion of the 
ice under the sun, and of the warmth of the 
water (?) there. In many places the ice is dark 
and transparent, and you see plainly the bottom 
on which it lies. The various figures in the 
partially rotted ice are very interesting, white 
bubbles, which look like coins of various sizes 
overlapping each other, parallel waving lines, 
with sometimes very slight intervals on the un- 
derside of sloping white ice, marking the suc- 
cessive levels at which the water has stood ; also 
countless white cleavages, perpendicular or in- 
clined, straight and zigzag, meeting and cross- 
ing each other at all possible angles, and mak- 
ing all kinds of geometrical figures, checkering 
the whole surface like white frills or ruffles in 
the ice. At length it melts on the edge of 
these cleavages into little gutters which catch 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 39 

the snow. There is the greatest noise from the 
cracking of the ice about 10 a. M., as I noticed 
yesterday and to-day. 

Where the last year's shoots or tops of the 
young white maples are brought together, as I 
walk toward a mass of them, one quarter of a 
mile off, with the sun on them, they present a 
fine dull scarlet streak. Young twigs are thus 
more fluid than the old wood, as if from their 
nearness to the flower, or like the complexion 
of children. You see thus a fine dash of red or 
scarlet against the distant hills which near at 
hand, or in the midst, is wholly unobservable. 
I go listening, but in vain, for the warble of 
the bluebird from the old orchard across the 
river. I love to look now at the fine-grained 
russet hillsi'ies in the sun, ready to relieve and 
contrast with the azure of the bluebirds. I 
made a burning-glass of ice which produced a 
slight sensation of warmth on the back of my 
hand, but was so irregular that it did not con- 
centrate the rays to a sufficiently small focus. 
Keturning over Great Fields found half a dozen 
arrowheads, one with three scallops in the base. 
. . . Heard two hawks scream. There was 
something truly March-like in it, like a pro- 
longed blast or whistling of the wind through a 
crevice in the sky, which, like a cracked blue 
saucer, overlaps the woods. Such are the first 



40 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

rude notes which prelude the summer's choir, 
learned of the whistling March wind. 

March 2, 1856. Walking up the river by 
Prichard's was surprised to see on the snow 
over the river a great many seeds and scales of 
birches, though the snow had so recently fallen. 
There had been but little wind, and it was 
already spring. There was one seed or scale 
to a square foot, yet the nearest birches were, 
about fifteen of them, along the wall thirty rods 
east. As I advanced towards them the seeds 
became thicker and thicker till they quite dis- 
colored the snow half a dozen rods distant, 
while east of the birches there was not one. 
The birches appear not to have lost a quarter 
of their seeds yet. So I went home up the 
river. I saw some of the seeds forty rods off, 
and perhaps in a more favorable direction I 
might have found them much farther. It sug- 
gested how unwearied Nature is in spreading 
her seeds. Even the spring does not find her 
unprovided with birch, ay, and alder and pine 
seed. A great proportion of the seed that was 
carried to a distance lodged in the hollow over 
the river, and when the river breaks up will be 
carried far away to distant shores and mead- 
ows. . . . 

I can hardly believe that hen-hawks may be 
beginning to build their nests now, yet their 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 41 

young were a fortnight old the last of April last 
year. 

March 2, 1858. I walk through the Col- 
bum farm pine woods, and thence to rear of 
John Hosmer's. See a large flock of snow 
buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoic- 
ing in the snow. I stand near a flock in an 
open field. They are trotting about briskly 
over the snow, amid the weeds, apparently pig- 
weed and Koman wormwood, as if to keep their 
toes warm hopping up to the weeds. Then 
they suddenly take to wing again, and as they 
wheel about one, it is a very rich sight to see 
them dressed in black and white uniforms, al- 
ternate black and white, very distinct and sin- 
gular. Perhaps no colors would be more effec- 
tive above the snow, black tips (considerably 
more) to wings, then clear white between this 
and the back, which is black or very dark again. 
. . . They alight again equally near. Their 
track is much like a small crow's track. 

The last new journal thinks that it is very 
liberal, nay, bold; but it does not publish a 
child's thought on important subjects, such as 
life and death and good books. It requires the 
sanction of the divines just as surely as the 
tamest journal does. If it had been published 
at the time of the famous dispute between 
Christ and the doctors, it would have published 



42 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

only the opinions of the doctors and suppressed 
Christ's. There is no need of a law to check 
the license of the press. It is law enough and 
more than enough to itself. Virtually the com- 
munity must have come together and agreed 
what things shall be uttered, have agreed on a 
platform and to excommunicate him who departs 
from it, and not one in a thousand dares utter 
anything else. There are plenty of journals 
brave enough to say what they think about the 
government, this being a free one ; but I know 
of none widely circulated or well conducted that 
does say what it thinks about the Sunday or the 
Bible. They have been bribed to keep dark. 
They are in the service of hypocrisy. 

March 2, 1859. We talk about spring as at 
hand before the end of February, and yet it 
will be two good months, one sixth part of the 
whole year, before we can go a-Maying. There 
may be a whole month of solid and uninter- 
rupted winter yet, plenty of ice and good sleigh- 
ing. We may not even see the bare ground, 
and hardly the water ; and yet we sit down and 
warm our 8])irits annually with the distant pros- 
j>eet of spring. As if a man were to warm his 
hands by stretching them towards the rising 
sun and rubbing them. We listen to the Feb- 
iiiary cock-crowing and turkey gobbling as to 
a first course or prelude. The bluebird, which 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 43 

some woodchopper or inspired walker is said to 
have seen in that sunny interval between the 
snow storms, is like a speck of clear blue sky 
seen near the end of a storm, reminding us of 
an ethereal region, and a heaven which we had 
forgotten. Princes and magistrates are often 
styled serene, but what is their turbid serenity 
to that ethereal serenity which the bluebird em- 
bodies. His most serene Birdship! His soft 
warble melts in the ear as the snow is melting 
in the valleys around. The bluebird comes, 
and with his warble drills the ice, and sets free 
the rivers and ponds and frozen ground. As 
the sand flows down the slopes a little way, 
assuming the forms of foliage when the frost 
comes out of the ground, so this little rill of 
melody flows a short way down the concave of 
the sky. 

The sharp whistle of the blackbird, too, is 
heard like single sparks, or a shower of them, 
shot up from the swamp and seen against the 
dark winter in the rear. 

March 2, 1860. There is a strong westerly 
wind to-day, though warm, and we sit under 
Dennis's Lupine promontory to observe the 
water. A richer blue than the sky ever is. 
The flooded meadows are ripple lakes on a large 
scale. The bare landscape, though no growth 
is visible in it, is bright and spring-like. 



44 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

There is the tawny earth (almost completely 
bare) of different shades, lighter or darker, the 
light Terr light in this air, more so than the 
surface of the earth ever is (i. 6., without 
snow), bleached, as it were, and in the hollows 
of it, set round by the tawny hills and banks, is 
this copious, living, and sparkling blue water of 
various shades. It is more dashing, rippling, 
sparkling, living this windy but clear day, 
never smooth, but ever varying in its degree of 
motion and depth of blue, as the wind is more 
or less strong, rising and faDing. All along 
the shore next us is a strip a few feet wide of 
very light and smooth sky-blue, for so much is 
sheltered ever by the lowest shore, but the rest 
is all more or less agitated and dark blue. In 
it are floating or stationary, here and there, 
cakes of white ice, the least looking like ducks, 
and large patches of water have a dirt}'-white 
or even tawny look where the ice still lies on 
the bottom of the meadow. Thus even the 
meadow flood is parded, of various patches of 
color. Ever and anon the wind seems to drop 
down from over the hills in strong puffs, and 
then spread and diffuse itself in dark, fan- 
shaped figures over the siu-face of the water. 
It is glorious to see how it sports on the watery 
surface. You see a hundred such nimble-footed 
puffs drop and spread on all sides at once, and 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 45 

dash on, sweeping the surface of the water for 
forty rods in a few seconds, as if so many in- 
visible spirits were playing tag there. It even 
suggests some fine dust swept along just above 
the surface, and reminds me of snow blowing 
over ice — and vapor curving along a roof, me- 
andering like that, often. The before dark 
blue is now diversified with much darker or 
blackish patches, with a suggestion of red, pur- 
plish even. ... I am surprised to see that the 
billows which the wind makes are concentric 
curves, apparently reaching round from shore 
to shore of this broad bay forty rods wide or 
more. For this, two things may account, the 
greater force of the wind in the middle and the 
friction of the shores. When it blows hardest 
each successive billow (four or five feet apart 
or more) is crowned with a yellowish or dirty- 
white foam. The wind blows around each side 
of the hill, the opposite currents meeting, per- 
chance, or it falls over the hill so that you have 
a field of ever-varying color, dark blue, black- 
ish, yellowish, light blue, smooth sky-blue, pur- 
plish, and yellowish foam, all at once. Some- 
times the wind visibly catches up the surface 
and blows it along and about in spray four or 
five feet high. The requisites are high water, 
mostly clear of ice, ground bare and sufficiently 
dry, weather warm enough, and wind strong 



46 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

and gusty. Then you may sit or stand on a 
hill and watch the play of the wind with the 
water. I know of no checker-board more inter- 
esting to watch. The wind, the gusts, comb 
the hair of the water-nymphs. You never tire 
of seeing it drop, spread, and sweep over the 
yielding and sensitive surface. The water is 
full of life, now rising into higher billows which 
would make your mast crack if you had any, 
now subsiding into lesser, dashing against and 
wearing away the still anchored ice, setting 
many small cakes adrift. How they entertain 
us with ever-changing scenes in the sky above 
or on the earth below. If the ploughman lean 
on his plough handle and look up or down, 
there is danger that he will forget his labor on 
that day. 

March 3, 1838. Homer. Three thousand 
years and the world so little changed. The 
Iliad seems like a natural soimd which has re- 
verberated to our days. Whatever in it is still 
freshest in the memories of men was most child- 
like in the poet. It is the problem of old age, 
a second childhood exhibited in the life of the 
world. Phoebus Apollo went like night, 6 8' ^t€ 
wKTt loLKii)^, This either refers to the gross at- 
mosphere of the plague, darkening the sun, or to 
the crescent of night, rising solemn and stately 
in the east, while the sim is setting in the west. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 47 
Then Agamemnon darkly lowers on Calehas, 

prophet of evil, ocrcrc 8c oi irvpi Xa/iTrcrowvrt (iKTqVy 

such a fire-eyed Agamemnon as you may see at 
town meetings and elections, as well here as in 
Troy neighborhood. 

March 3, 1839. The poet must be some- 
thing more than natural, even supernatural.. 
Nature will not speak through him, but along 
with him. His voice will not proceed from her 
midst, but, breathing on her, will make her the 
expression of his thought. He then poetizes 
when he takes a fact out of nature into spirit. 
He speaks without reference to time or place. 
His thought is one world, hers, another. He 
is another nature, nature's brother. 

March 3, 1841. I hear a man blowing a 
horn this still evening, and it sounds like the 
plaint of nature in these times. In this which 
1 refer to some man there is something greater 
than any man. It is as if the earth spoke. It 
adds a great remoteness to the horizon, and its 
very distance is grand, as when one draws back 
the head to speak. That which I now hear in 
the west seems like an invitation to the east. 
It runs round the earth as roimd a whisper- 
ing galleiy. All things great seem transpiring 
where this sound comes from. It is friendly as 
a distant hermit's taper. When it trills or 
undulates, the heavens are crumpled into time, 



48 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

and successive waves flow across them. It is 
a strangely healthy sound for these disjointed 
times. It is a rare soundness when cow-bells 
and horns are heard from over the fields. And 
now I see the full meaning and beauty of that 
word, sound. Nature always possesses a cer- 
tain sonorousness, as in the hum of insects, the 
booming of ice, the crowing of cocks in the 
morning, and the barking of dogs in the night, 
which indicates her sound state. God's voice 
is but a clear bell sound. I drink in a wonder- 
ful health, a cordial^ in sound. The effect of 
the slightest tinkling in the horizon measures 
my own soundness. I thank God for sound. 
It always mounts and makes me mount. I 
think I will not trouble myself for any wealth 
when I can be so cheaply enriched. Here I 
contemplate to drudge that I may own a farm, 
and may have such a limitless estate for the lis- 
tening. All good things are cheap, all bad are 
very dear. 

As for these communities, I think I had 
rather keep bachelor's hall in hell than go to 
board in heaven. Do not think your virtue 
will be boarded with you. It will never live 
on the interest of your money, depend upon it. 
The boarder has no home. In heaven I hope 
to bake my own bread and clean my own linen. 
The tomb is the only boarding-house in which 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 49 

a hundred are served at once. In the cata- 
combs we may dwell together and prop one 
another up without loss. 

JI/arcA 3, 1857. To Fair Haven HiU. 3 p.m. 
24° -(- in shade. The red maple sap, which 
I first noticed the 21st of February, is now 
frozen up in the auger holes, and thence down 
the trunk to the ground, except in one place 
where the hole was made on the south side of 
the tree, where it is melted and is flowing a 
little. Generally, then, when the thermometer 
is thus low, say below freezing point, it does 
not thaw in the auger holes. There is no ex- 
panding of buds of any kind, nor are early birds 
to be seen. Nature was, thus, premature, an- 
ticipated her own revolutions with respect to 
the sap of trees, the buds (spiraea, at least), 
and birds. The warm spell ended with Febru- 
ary 26th. 

The crust of yesterday's snow has been con- 
verted by the sun and wind into flakes of thin 
ice from two or three inches to a foot in diame- 
ter, scattered like a mackerel sky over the pas- 
tures, as if all the snow had been blown out 
from beneath. Much of this thin ice is partly 
opaque and has a glutinous look even, remind- 
ing me of frozen glue. Probably it has much 
dust mixed with it. . . . The slight robin snow 
of yesterday is already mostly dissipated, but 



50 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

where a heap still lingers the sun on the warm 
face of this cliff leads down a puny, trickling 
rill, moistening the gutters on the steep face of 
the rocks where patches of umbilicaria lichens 
grow, of rank growth, but now thirsty and dry 
as bones and hornets' nests, dry as shells which 
crackle under your feet. The more fortunate 
of these, which stand by the moistened seam 
or gutter of the rock, luxuriate in the grateful 
moisture as in the spring, their rigid nerves 
relax, they unbend and droop like limber in- 
fancy, and from dry ash and leather color turn 
a lively olive green. You can trace the course 
of this trickling stream over the rock through 
such a patch of lichens by the olive green of the 
lichens alone. Here and there the same mois- 
ture refreshes and brightens up the scarlet 
crown of some little cockscomb lichen, and 
when the rill reaches the perpendicular face of 
the cliff, its constant drip at night builds great 
organ pipes, of a ringed structure, which run 
together buttressing the rock. Skating yester- 
day and to-day. 

March 3, 1859. Going by the solidago oak 
at Clam-shell Hill bank, I heard a faint rip- 
pling note, and looking up saw about fifteen 
snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak, all 
with their breasts toward me. Sitting so still, 
and quite white seen against the white cloudy 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 61 

sky, they did not look like birds, and their 
boldness, allowing me to come quite near, en- 
hanced this impression. They were almost as 
white as snow-balls, and from time to time I 
heard a low, soft, rippling note from them. I 
could see no features, but only the general out- 
line of plump birds in white. It was a very 
spectral sight, and after I had watched them for 
several minutes I can hardly say that I was pre- 
pared to see them fly away like ordinary bunt- 
ings when I advanced further. At first they 
were almost concealed by being the same color 
with the cloudy sky. . . . 

How imperceptibly the first springing takes 
place! In some still, muddy springs whose 
temperature is more equable than that of the 
brooks, while brooks and ditches generally are 
thickly frozen and concealed, and the earth is 
covered with snow, and it is even cold, hard, 
and nipping winter weather, some fine grass 
which fills the water begins to lift its tiny spears 
or blades above the surface, which directly fall 
flat for half an inch or an inch along the sur- 
face, and on these (though many are frost-bit- 
ten) you may measure the length to which the 
spring has advanced (has spnmg); very few 
indeed, even of botanists, are aware of this 
growth. Some of it appears to go on even 
imder ice and snow. Or, in such a place as 



52 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

I have described, if it is sheltered by alders 
or the like, you may see (as March 2d) a little 
green crescent of caltha leaves raised an inch 
or so above the water, the leaves but partially 
unrolled and looking as if they would withdraw 
beneath the surface again at night. This I 
think must be the most conspicuous and for- 
ward greenness of the spring. The small red- 
dish, radical leaves of the dock, too, are ob- 
served flat on the moist ground as soon as the 
snow has melted there, as if they had grown 
beneath it. 

Talk about reading! a good reader! It 
depends on how he is heard. There may be 
elocution and pronunciation (recitation say) to 
satiety, but there can be no good reading unless 
there is good hearing also. It takes two, at 
least, for this game, as for love, and they must 
cooperate. The lecturer will read but those 
parts of his lecture which are best heard. 
Sometimes, it is true, the faith and spirits of 
the reader run a little ahead and draw after the 
good hearing, and at other times the good hear- 
ing runs ahead and draws on the good reading. 
The reader and the hearer are a team not to be 
harnessed tandem, the poor wheel horse support- 
ing the burden of the shafts, while the leader 
runs pretty much at will, the lecture lying pas- 
sive in the painted curricle behind. I saw some 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 63 

men unloading molasses hogsheads from a truck 
at a depot the other day, by rolling them up 
an inclined plane. The truckmen stood behind 
and shoved, after putting a couple of ropes, 
one round each end of the hogshead, while two 
men standing in the depot steadily pulled at 
the ropes. The first man was the lecturer, the 
others were the audience. It is the duty of 
the lecturer to team his hogshead of sweets to the 
depot or Lyceum, place the horse, arrange the 
ropes, and shove, and it is the duty of the au- 
dience to take hold of the ropes and pull with 
all their might. The lecturer who has to read 
his essay without being abetted by a good hear- 
ing is in the predicament of a teamster who is 
engaged in the Sisyphean labor of rolling a 
molasses hogshead up an inclined plane alone, 
while the freight-master and his men stand in- 
different with their hands in their pockets. I 
have seen many such a hogshead which had 
rolled off the horse and gone to smash with all 
the sweets wasted on the ground between the 
truckmen and the freight-house, and the freight- 
masters thought the loss was not theirs. Bead 
well! Did you ever know a full well that did 
not yield of its refreshing waters to those who 
put their hands to the windlass or the well- 
sweep? Did you ever suck cider through a 
straw? Did you ever know the cider to push 



54 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

out of the straw when you were not sucking, 
unless it chanced to be in a complete ferment? 
An audience will draw out of a lecture, or en- 
able a lecturer to read, only such parts of his 
lecture as they like. It is like a barrel half full 
of some palatable liquor. You may tap it at 
various levels, in the sweet liquor, or in the 
froth, or in the fixed air above. If it is pro- 
nounced good, it is partly to the credit of the 
hearers ; if bad, it is partly their fault. Some- 
times a lazy audience refuses to cooperate and 
pull at the ropes because the hogshead is full 
and therefore heavy, when if it were empty, 
or had only a little sugar adhering to it, they 
would whisk it up the slope in a jifEy. The 
lecturer therefore desires of his audience a long 
pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together. I 
have seen a sturdy (truckman) lecturer who had 
nearly broken his back with shoving his lecture 
up such an inclined plane, while the audience 
were laughing at him, at length, as with a last 
effort, set it a-rolling in amid the audience and 
upon their toes, scattering them like sheep and 
making them cry out with pain, while he drove 
proudly away. Rarely it is a very heavy freight 
of such hocfsheads stored in a vessel's hold that 
is to be lifted out and deposited on the public 
wharf, and this is accomplished only after many 
a hearty pull and a good deal of heave-yo-ing. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 66 

March 3, 1860. 2 p. m. 50° +. Overcast 
and somewhat rain-threatening. Wind south- 
west. To Abner Buttrick and Tarbell Hills. 
See a flock of large ducks in a line (may be 
black?) over Great Meadows, also a few shel- 
drakes. It was pleasant to hear the tinkling 
of very coarse brash, broken, honey-combed, 
dark ice, rattling one piece against another 
along the northeast shores, to which it had 
drifted. Scarcely any ice now about river ex- 
cept what rests on the bottom of the meadow, 
dirty with sediment. The first song-sparrows 
are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown 
earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think 
you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then 
the sparrow flies low away. 

March 4, 1840. I learned to-day that my 
ornithology had done me no service. The birds 
I heard, which fortunately did not come within 
the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it 
had been the first morning of creation, and had 
for background to their song an untrodden wil- 
derness stretching through many a Carolina 
and Mexico of the soul. 

March 4, 1841. Ben Jonson says in his epi- 
grams, "He makes himself a thoroughfare of 
vice." This is true, for by vice the substance 
of a man is not changed, but all his pores and 
cavities and avenues are profaned by being 



56 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

made the thoroughfares of vice. The searching 
devil courses through and through him. His 
flesh and blood and bones are cheapened. He 
is all trivial, a place where three highways of 
sin meet. So is another the thoroughfare of 
virtue, and virtue circulates through all his 
aisles like a wind, and he is hallowed. 

We reprove each other imconsciously by our 
own behavior. Our very carriage and de- 
meanor in the streets should be a reprimand 
that will go to the conscience of every beholder. 
An infusion of love from a great soul gives a 
color to our faults which will discover them as 
lunar caustic detects impurities in water. The 
best will not seem to go contrary to others ; but 
as if they could afford to travel the same way, 
they go a parallel but higher course. Jonson 
says, — 

" That to the vulgar canst thyself apply. 
Treading a better path, not contrary." 

March 4, 1852. It is discouraging to talk 
with men who will recognize no principles. 
How little use is made of reason in this world I 
You argue with a man for an hour, he agrees 
with you step by step, you are approaching a 
triumphant conclusion, you think that you have 
converted him, but, ah, no, he has a habit, he 
takes a pinch of snuff, he remembers that he 
entertained a different opinion at the commence* 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 67 

ment of the controversy, and his reverence for 
the past compels him to reiterate it now. You 
began at the butt of the pole to curve it, you 
gradually bent it round according to rule, and 
planted the other end in the ground, ahd already 
in imagination saw the vine curling round this 
segment of an arbor, imder which a new gener- 
ation was to recreate itself, but when you had 
done, it sprang back to its former stubborn and 
unhandsome position like a bit of whalebone. 

10 A. M. Up river on ice to Fairhaven 
Pond. . . . We have this morning the clear, 
cold, continent sky of January. The river is 
frozen solidly, and I do not have to look out for 
openings. Now I can take that walk along the 
river highway and the meadow which leads me 
under the boughs of the maples and the swamp 
white oaks, etc., which in summer overhang the 
water. I can now stand at my ease and study 
their phenomena amid the sweet gale and but- 
ton bushes projecting above the snow and ice. 
I see the shore from the water side; a liberal 
walk, so level, wide, and smooth, without un- 
derbrush. In some places where the ice is ex- 
posed I see a kind of crystallized chaffy snow 
like little bundles of asbestos on its surface. I 
seek some sunny nook on the south side of a 
wood which keeps off the cold wind, among the 
maples and the swamp white oaks, and there 



5S- 3^iir s?2I:^v^ :ir tr^^^^w^iy^n ' ^^ 



3ki 'VQHcber ub. ^ ^ivid ^or Ikt^ '^vaonnf nut 
ao 3iuiut ^ 3iii]iiii J^. :iiur iouuiL r jaw^ ^anl 



mucnim^ joii ^i^n^nim;:. Trm ::in'<{C3iiiis- ^tUKssesw 
aaii Ji soiicitr^ -:r:kTii^r -vrrspmn^ Ji^ .akndk a&mit 
him ajii '^nc 5nrv:sj?i J^rsmsc ^ vortyizi^ iincim. 

die Uffiu *x, % «i^r m nhhrnj^ ^^jt Tsx£*xa^ a 

. . . Ll *ae frc^JT^Jiirn: ^iuuji i;^D%niir A* &a9>- 
vess, azhi fair in lau *^ii(L'ir^-*cniiL ^r^ntga dke 

otlier eT^if^m^is -:£ scriz^. CVi lOi; r^bii aad 
left of the apccuk'fr'T-; x-^c^jr^ laatf hisiiiTHB 
should be siiaied o5 frvci ^ ISu:i5 o£ miiiiT 
to midnight wizh is ssars. rie sc:^ c^eiz^ low in 
the sky. 

I look between my k^ ap tlie ri^er aczi^ss 
Fair Haven. SubTerting the hie;id« we refer 
things to the hearens; the skr becomes the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 69 

ground of the picture, and where the river 
breaks through low hills which slope to meet 
each other one quarter of a mile off, appears a 
mountain pass, so much nearer is it to heaven. 
We are compelled to call it something which* 
relates it to the heavens rather than the earth. 

Now at eleven and a half, perhaps, the sky 
begins to be slightly overcast. The northwest 
is the god of the winter, as the southwest of the 
smnmer. The forms of clouds are interesting, 
often, as now, like flames, or more like the sui*f 
curling before it breaks, reminding me of the 
prows of ancient vessels which have their pat- 
tern or prototype again in the surf, as if the 
wind made' a surf of the mist. Thus as the 
fishes look up at the waves, we look up at the 
clouds. It is pleasant to see the reddish green 
leaves of the lambkill still hanging with fruit 
above the snow, for I am now crossing the 
shrub oak plain to the Cliffs. I find a place 
on the south side of this rocky hill where the 
snow is melted and the bare gray rock appears 
covered with mosses and lichens and beds of 
oak leaves in the hollows, where I can sit, and 
an invisible flame and smoke seem to ascend 
from the leaves, and the sun shines with a gen- 
ial warmth, and you can imagine the hum of 
bees amid flowers. The heat reflected from the 
dry leaves reminds you of the sweet fern and 



60 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

tliose summer afternoons which are longer than 
a winter day, though you sit on a mere oasis in 
the snow. The snow is melting on the rocks, 
the water trickles down in shining streams, the 
mosses look bright ; the first awakening of veg- 
etation is at the root of the saxifrage. As I 
go by the farmer's yard the hens cackle more 
solidly, as if eggs were the burden of the 
strain. 

A horse's fore legs are handier than his hind 
ones, the latter but fall into the place which the 
former have found. They have the advantage 
of being nearer the head, the source of intelli- 
gence. He strikes and paws with them. It is 
true he kicks with the hind legs. But that is 
a very simple and unscientific action, as if his 
whole body were a whiplash and his heels the 
snapper. 

Tlie constant reference in our lives, even in 
the most trivial matters, to the superhuman is 
wonderful. If a portrait is painted, neither the 
wife's opinion of the husband, nor the hus- 
band's opinion of the wife, nor cither's opinion 
of the artist, not man's opinion of man, is final 
and satisfactory. Man is not the final judge of 
tlie liumblest work, though it bo piling wood. 
Tlie queen and the chambermaid, the king and 
the hired man, the Indian and the slave, alike 
appeal to God. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 61 

Each man's mode of speaking of the sexual 
relation proves how sacred his own relations of 
that kind are. We do not respect the mind 
that can jest on this subject. 

March 4, 1854. p. m. To Walden. In 
the meadow I see some still fresh and perfect 
pitcher plant leaves, and everywhere the green 
and reddish radical leaves of the golden sene- 
cio, whose fragrance when bruised carries me 
back or forward to an incredible season. Who 
would believe that under the snow and ice lie 
still, or in mid-winter, some green leaves which 
bruised yield the same odor that they do when 
their yellow blossoms spot the meadows in June. 
Nothing so realizes the summer to me now. In 
the dry pastures imder the Cliff Hill, the radi- 
cal leaves of the Johnswort are now revealed 
everywhere in pretty radiating wreaths flat on 
the ground. These leaves are recurved, red- 
dish above, green beneath, and covered with 
dewy drops. I see nowadays, the ground being 
laid bare, great cracks in the earth revealed, 
a third of an inch wide, running with a crink- 
ling line for twenty rods or more through the 
pastures and under the walls, frost cracks of 
the past winter. Sometimes they are revealed 
through ice four or five inches thick over them. 
I observed to-day where a crack had divided 
a piece of bark lying over it with the same 



62 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

irregular and finely meandering lines, sometimes 
forking. 

March 4, 1855. p. m. Though there is a 
cold and strong wind, it is very warm in the 
sun, and we can sit in it when sheltered by 
these rocks with impunity. It is a genial 
warmth. The rustle of the dry leaves on the 
earth and in the crannies of the rocks, and 
gathered in deep windrows just under their 
edge, midleg deep, reminds me of fires in the 
woods. They are almost ready to burn. 

March 4, 1859. We stood still a few mo- 
ments on the turnpike below Wright's (the turn- 
pike which has no wheel track beyond Tuttle's 
and no track at all beyond Wright's), and lis- 
tened to hear a spring bird. We only lieard 
the jay screaming in the distance and the caw- 
ing of a crow. What a perfectly New England 
soimd is this voice of the crow I If you stand 
perfectly still anywhere in the outskirts of the 
town and listen, stilling the almost incessant 
hum of your personal factory, this is perhaps 
the sound which you will be most sure to hear, 
rising above all sounds of human industry, and 
leading your thoughts to some far bay in the 
woods, where the crow is venting his disgust. 
This bird sees the white man come and the 
Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its 
untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling 



EARL Y SPRING IN MA SSA CHUSETTS 63 

of tbe forge. It sees a race pass away, but it 
passes not away. It remains to remind us of 
aboriginal nature. 

March 6, 1841. How can our love increase 
imless our loveliness increases also. We must 
securely love each other as we love God, with 
no more danger that our love be unrequited or 
ill-bestowed. There is that in my friend before 
which I must first decay and prove untrue. 
Love is the least moral and the most. Are the 
best good in their love? or the worst, bad? 

March 5, 1853. It is encouraging to know 
that though every kernel of truth has been care- 
fully swept out of our churches, there yet re- 
mains the dust of truth on their walls, so that 
if you should carry a light into them, they would 
still, like some powder-mills, blow up at once. 

3 P. M. To the Beeches. A misty after- 
noon, but warm, threatening rain. Standing 
on Walden, whose eastern shore is laid waste, 
men walking on the hillside a quarter of a 
mile off are singularly interesting objects, seen 
through the mist, which has the effect of a 
mirage. The persons of the walkers are black 
on the snowy ground, and the limited horizon 
makes them the more important in the scene. 
This kind of weather is very favorable to our 
landscape. I must not forget the lichen- 
painted boles of the beeches. 



64 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Kound to the white bridge, where the red- 
maple buds are already much expanded, fore- 
telling simimer, though our eyes see only win- 
ter as yet. As I sit under their boughs looking 
into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black 
dots of the expanded buds against the sky. 
Their sap is flowing. The elm buds, too, I 
find are expanded, though on earth are no signs 
of spring. I find myself inspecting little gran- 
ules, as it were, on the bark of trees, little 
shields or apothecia springing from a thallus, 
and I call it studying lichens. That is merely 
the prospect which is afforded me. It is short 
commons and innutritions. Surely I might take 
wider views. The habit of looking at things 
microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and 
rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in 
a walk. Would it not be noble to study the 
shield of the sun on the thallus of the sky, 
cerulean, which scatters its infinite sporules of 
light through the universe? To^ the lichenist 
is not the shield (or rather the apothecium) of 
a lichen disproportionately large compared with 
the universe ? 

F. Browne showed me some lesser redpolls 
which he shot yesterday. They turn out to be 
very falsely called the chestnut frontleted bird 
of the winter. " Linaria minor. Ray. Lesser 
Redpoll. Linnet. From Pennsylvania and 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 66 

New Jersey to Maine, in winter; inland to 
Kentucky. Breeds in Maine, Nova Scotia, 
Newfoundland, Labrador, and the fur coun- 
tries." Aud. Synopsis. They have a sharp 
bill, black legs and claws, and a bright crimson 
crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the 
base of the bill, with, in his case, a delicate 
rose or carmine on the breast and nunp. 
Though this is described in Nuttall as an oc- 
casional visitor in the winter, it has been the 
prevailing bird here this winter. 

Yesterday I got my grape cuttings. The day 
before went to the Comer spring to look at the 
tufts of green grass. . . ' . Was pleased with 
the sight of the yellow osiers of the golden wil- 
low aud the red of the cornel, now colors are so 
rare. Saw the green fine-threaded conferva in 
a ditch, commonly called frog spittle. Brought 
it home in my pocket and it expanded again in 
a tmnbler. It appeared quite a fresh growth, 
with what looked like filmy air-bubbles as big 
as large shot in its midst. 

The Secretary of the Association for the 
Advancement of Science requested me, as he 
probably has thousands of others, by a printed 
circular letter from Washington, the other day, 
to fill the blanks against certain questions, 
among which the most important one was what 
branch of science I was specially interested in. 



66 EARLY SPRING IN MA SSA CHUSE TTS 

using the term science in the most comprehen- 
sive sense possible. Now, though I could state 
to a select few that department of himian in- 
quiry which engages me, and should rejoice at 
an opportimity so to do, I felt that it would be 
to make myself the laughing stock of the scien- 
tific community to describe to them that branch 
of science which specially interests me, inasmuch 
as they do not believe in a science which deals 
with the higher law. So I was obliged to 
speak to their condition and describe to them 
that poor part of me which alone they can un- 
derstand. The fact is I am a mystic, a tran- 
scendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. 
Now I think of it, I should have told them at 
once that I was a transcendentalist ; that would 
have been the shortest way of telling them that 
they would not understand my explanations. 
How absurd that though I probably stand as 
near to Nature as any of them, and am by con- 
stitution as good an observer as most, yet a true 
account of my relation to Nature should excite 
their ridicule only. If it had been the secre- 
tary of an association of which Plato or Aris- 
totle was the president, I should not have 
hesitated to describe my studies at once and 
particularly. 

March 6, 1856. To Carlisle, surveying. I 
bad two friends. The one offered me friend- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 67 

ship on such terms that I could not accept it 
without a sense of degradation. He would not 
meet me on equal terms, but only be to some 
extent my patron. He would not come to see 
me, but was hurt if I did not visit him. He 
would not readily accept a favor, but would 
gladly confer one. He treated me with cere- 
mony occasionally, though he could be simple 
and downright sometimes. From time to time 
he acted a part, treating me as if I were a dis- 
tinguished stranger, was on stilts, using made 
words. Our relation was one long tragedy, yet 
I did not directly speak of it. I do not believe 
in complaint, nor in explanations. The whole 
is but too plain, alas, already. We grieve that 
we do not love each other. I could not bring 
myself to speak and so recognize an obstacle to 
our affection. 

I had another friend, who through a slight 
obtuseness, perchance, did not recognize a fact 
which the dignity of friendship would by no 
means allow me to descend so far as to speak 
of, and yet the inevitable effect of that igno- 
rance was to hold us apart forever. 

March 5, 1858. We read the English poets, 
we study botany and zoology and geology, lean 
and dry as they are, and it is rare that we get 
a new suggestion. It is ebb tide with the scien- 
tific reports. Professor in the chair. We 



68 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

would fain know something more about these 
animals and stones and trees around us. We 
are ready to skin the animals alive to come at 
them. Our scientific names convey a very par- 
tial information, they suggest certain thoughts 
only. It does not occur to me that there are 
other names for most of these objects, given by 
a people who stood between me and them, who 
had better senses than our race. How little I 
know of that arbor vitce when I have heard only 
what science can tell me. It is but a word, it 
is not a tree of life. But there are twenty 
words for the tree and its different parts which 
the Indian gave, which are not in our botanies, 
which imply a more practical and vital science. 
He used it every day. He was well acquainted 
with its wood, its bark, and its leaves. No 
science does more than arrange what knowledge 
we have of any class of objects. But generally 
speaking, how much more conversant was the 
Indian with any wild animal or plant than we, 
and in his language is implied all that intimacy, 
as much as ours is expressed in our language. 
How many words in his language about a moose, 
or birch bark, and the like. The Indian stood 
nearer to wild nature than we. The wildest 
and noblest quadrupeds, even the largest fresh 
water fish, some of the wildest and noblest birds, 
and the fairest flowers have actually receded as 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 69 

we advanced, and we have but the most distant 
knowledge of them. A nmior has come down 
to us that the skin of a lion was seen and his 
roar heard here by an early settler. But there 
was a race here that slept on his skin. It was 
a new light when my guide gave me Indian 
names for things for which I had only scientific 
ones before. In proportion as I understood the 
language, I saw them from a new point of view, 

A dictionary of the Indian language reveals 
another and wholly new life to us. Look at the 
word canoe, and see what a story it tells of out- 
door life, with the names of all its parts and of 
the modes of driving it, as our words describe 
the different parts of a coach; or at the word 
wigwam, and see how close it brings you to the 
ground; or at Indian com, and see which race 
has been most familiar with it. It reveals to 
me a life within a life, or rather a life without 
a life, as it were threading the woods between 
our towns, and yet we can never tread on its 
trail. The Indian's earthly life was as far off 
from us as heaven is. 

I saw yesterday a musquash sitting on thin 
ice on the Assabet, by a hole which it had kept 
open, gnawing a white root. Now and then it 
would dive and bring up more. I waited for 
ii to dive again that I might run nearer to it 
iXf^anwhile, but it sat ten minutes all wet in the 



70 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

freezing wind while my feet 'and ears grew 
numb, so tough it is. At last I got quite near. 
When I frightened it, it dove with a sudden 
slap of its tail. I feel pretty sure that this is 
an involuntary movement, the tail, by the sud- 
den turn of the body, being brought down on 
the water or ice like a whiplash. 

March 5, 1859. Going down town this A. M. 
I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm 
within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and 
more like a song than I remember to have heard 
from it. There was a chickadee close by to 
which it may have been addressed. It was 
something like ^^To-what what what what 
whaV^ rapidly repeated, and not the usual 
^^quah quahy And this instant it occurs to 
me that this may be that earliest spring note 
which I hear and have referred to a wood- 
pecker! This is before I have chanced to see 
a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this 
year. It is the spring note of the nuthatch. 
It paused in its progress about the trunk or 
branch, and uttered this lively but peculiarly 
inarticulate song, an awkward attempt to war- 
ble almost in the face of the chickadee, as if it 
were one of its kind. It was thus giving vent 
to the spring within it. If I am not mistaken, 
this is what I have heard in former springs oi 
winters long ago, fabulously early in the season, 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 71 

when we men had but just begun to anticipate 
the spring, for it would seem that we in our 
anticipations and sympathies include in succes- 
sion the moods and expressions of all creatures. 
When only the snow had begun to melt and no 
rill of song had broken loose, a note so dry and 
fettered still, so inarticulate and half thawed 
out, that you might and would commonly mis- 
take it for the tapping of a woodpecker. As if 
the yoimg nuthatch in its hole had listened only 
to the tapping of woodpeckers and learned that 
music, and now when it would sing and give 
vent to its spring ecstasy, it can modulate only 
some notes like that. That is its theme still. 
That is its ruling idea of song and music. 
Only a little clangor and liquidity added to the 
tapping of the woodpecker. It was the handle 
by which my thoughts took firmly hold on 
spring. This herald of spring is commonly 
imseen, it sits so close to the bark. 

March 5, 1860. The old naturalists were 
so sensitive and sympathetic toward nature that 
they could be surprised by the ordinary events 
of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, 
and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were 
not incredible. The greatest and saddest de- 
fect is not credulity, but an habitual f orgetfid- 
ness that our science is ignorance. 

As we sat under Lupine promontory the other 



72 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

day, watching the ripples that swept over the 
flooded meadows, and thinking what an eligible 

site that would be for a cottage, C declared 

that we did not live in the country as long as 
we lived in that village street and only took 
walks into the fields, any more than if we lived 
in Boston or New York. We enjoyed none of 
the immortal quiet of the country as we might 
here, for instance, but, perchance, the first sound 
that we hear in the morning, instead of the note of 
a bird, is some neighbor's hawking and spitting. 

March 6, 1840. There is no delay in an- 
swering great questions; for them all things 
have an answer ready. The Pythian priestess 
gave her answers instantly, and ofttimes before 
the questions were fairly propounded. Great 
topics do not wait for past or future to be deter*- 
mined; but the state of the crops or Brighton 
market, no bird concerns itself about. 

March 6, 1841. An honest misunderstand- 
ing is often the ground of future intercourse. 

March 6, 1853. p. m. To Lee's Hill. I 
am pleased to cut the small woods with my 
knife to see their color. The high blueberry, 
hazel, and swamp pink are green. I love to 
see the clear green sprouts of the sassafras, and 
its large and fragrant buds and bark. The 
twigs and branches of yoimg trees twenty feet 
high look as if scorched and blackened. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 73 

The water is pretty high on the meadows 
(though the ground is covered with snow) so 
that we get a little of the peculiar still lake 
view at evening when the wind goes down. 

Two red squirrels made an ado about or 
above me near the North River, hastily running 
from tree to tree, leaping from the extremity of 
one bough to that of another on the next tree, 
until they gained and ascended a large white 
pine. I approached and stood imder this, while 
they made a gi*eat fuss about me. One at 
length came part way down to reconnoitre me. 
It seemed that one did the barking, a faint, 
short, chippy bark, like that of a toy dog, its 
tail vibrating each time, while its neck was 
stretched over a bough as it peered at me. The 
other, higher up, kept up a sort of gurgling 
whistle, more like a bird than a beast. When 
I made a noise, they would stop a moment. 

Scared up a partridge which had crawled into 
a pile of wood. Saw a gray hare, a dirty yel- 
lowish gray, not trig and neat, but, as usual, 
apparently in dishabille. As it frequently does, 
it ran a little way and stopped just at the en- 
trance to its retreat, then, when I moved again, 
suddenly disappeared. By a slight obscure 
hole in the snow it had access to a large and 
apparently deep woodchucks' hole. 

March 6, 1854. The water here and there 



74 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

on the meadow begins to appear smooth, and I 
look to see it rippled by a muskrat. The 
earth has, to some extent, frozen dry, for the 
drying of the earth goes on in the cold night as 
well as the warm day. The alders and hedge- 
rows are still silent, emit no notes. 

According to G. B. Emerson, maple sap 
sometimes begins to flow in the middle of Feb- 
ruary, but usually in the second week in March, 
especially in a clear bright day with a westerly 
wind, after a frosty night. ... I saw trout 
glance in the Mill Brook this afternoon, though 
near its sources in Hubbard's Close it is still 
covered with dark icy snow, and the river into 
which it empties has not broken up. Can they 
have come up from the sea? Like a film or 
shadow they glance before the eye, and you see 
where the mud is roiled by them. ... I see 
the skunk-cabbage started about the spring at 
head of Hubbard's Close, amid the green grass, 
and what looks like the first probing of the 
skunk. . . . The ponds are hard enough for 
skating again. Heard and saw the first black- 
bird flying east over the Deep Cut, with a 
tchuck'tchuchy and finally a split whistle. 

March 6, 1855. To Second Division Brook. 
. . . Observed a mouse's nest in Second Divi- 
sion meadow, where it had been made under the 
snow, a nice, warm, globular nest, some five 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 76 

inches in diameter, amid the sphagnum, cran- 
berry vines, etc., made of dried grass and lined 
with a still finer grass. The hole was on one 
side, and the bottom was near two inches thick. 
There were many small paths or galleries in the 
meadow leading to this from the brook some 
rod or more distant. 

The small gyrinus is circling in the brook. 
I see where much fur of a rabbit, which proba- 
bly a fox was carrying, has caught on a moss- 
rose twig as he leaped a ditch. . • • There is a 
peculiar redness in the western sky just after 
sunset. There are many great dark slate-col- 
ored clouds floating there, seen against more 
distant and thin wispy, bright, vermiUion, (?) 
almost blood-red ones, which in many places 

appear as the lining of the former I see 

in many places where, after the late freshet, 
the musquash made their paths under the ice, 
leading from the water a rod or two to a bed 
of grass above the water level. 

March 6, 1858. p. m. Up river on ice to 
Fair Haven Pond. The river is frozen more 
solidly than during the past winter, and for the 
first time for a year I could cross it in most 
places. I did not once cross it the past winter, 
though by choosing a safe place I might have 
done so without doubt once or twice. But I 
have had no river walks before. I see the first 



76 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

hen-hawk or hawk of any kind, methinks, since 
the beginning of winter. Its scream, even, is 
inspiring, as the voice of a spring bird. 

That light spongy bark about the base of the 
nesaea appears to be good tinder. I have only 
to touch one end to a coal and it all bums out 
slowly, without blazing, in whatever position 
held, and even after being dipped in water. 

Sunday^ March 6, 1859. p. m. To Yellow 
Birch Swamp. We go through the swamp near 
Bee Tree or Oak Ridge listening for blackbirds 
or robins, and in the old orchard for bluebirds. 
Found between two of the little birches in the 
path, where they grow densely, in indigo-bird 
sproutland, a small nest suspended between one 
and two feet from the ground. This is where I 
have seen the indigo-bird in summer, and the 
nest apparently answers to Wilson's account of 
that bird, being fastened with saliva to the 
birch on each side. Wilson says, "It is built 
in a low bush, . . . suspended between two 
twigs, one passing up each side." It is about 
the diameter of a hair-bird's nest within, com- 
posed chiefly of fine bark shreds looking like 
grass, and one or two strips of grapevine bark, 
and very securely fastened to the birch on each 
side by a whitish silk or cobweb and saliva. It 
is thin, the lining being probably gone. 

March 6, 1860. p. m. Fair and spring-like 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 77 

i. 6., rather still for March, with some raw 
wind. Pleasant in sun. Going by Messer's 
I hear the well-known note and see a flock of 
Fringilla hiemalis^ flitting in a lively manner 
about trees, weeds, walls, and ground by the 
roadside, showing their two white tail feathers. 
They are more fearless than the song-sparrow. 
They attract notice by their numbers and inces- 
sant twittering in a social manner. The Una- 
rias have been the most nimierous birds here 
the past winter. I can scarcely see a heel of 
a snow-drift from my window. Jonas Melvin 
says he saw himdreds of "speckled" turtles out 
on the banks to-day in a voyage to Billerica for 
musquash. Also saw gulls. Sheldrakes and 
black ducks are the only ones he has seen this 
year. A still and mild moonlight night, and 
people walking about the streets. 

March 7, 1838. We should not endeavor 
coolly to analyze our thoughts, but, keeping the 
pen even and parallel with the current, make 
an accurate transcript of them. Impulse is, 
after all, the best linguist ; its logic, if not con- 
formable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most 
convincing. The nearer we can approach to a 
complete but simple transcript of our thought, 
the more tolerable will be the piece, for we can 
endure to consider ourselves in a state of passiv- 
ity or in involuntary action, but rarely can we 



78 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

endure to consider our efforts, and, least of all, 
our rare efforts. 

March 7, 1852. At 9 o'clock p. m. to the 
woods by the full moon. . . . Going through 
the high field beyond the lone grave-yard, I see 
the track of a boy's sled before me, and his 
footsteps shining like silver between me and the 
moon; and now I come to where they have 
coasted in a hollow in the upland beanfield, and 
there are countless tracks of sleds. I forget that 
the sun shone on them in their sport, as if I had 
reached the region of perpetual twilight, and 
their sports appear more significant and sym- 
bolical now, more earnest. For what a man 
does abroad by night requires and implies more 
deliberate energy than what he is encouraged to 
do in the sunshine. He is more spiritual, less 
animal and vegetable, in the former case. . . . 
This stillness is more impressive than any sound. 
The moon, the stars, the trees, the snow, the 
sand when bare, a monumental stillness whose 
void must be supplied by thought. It extracts 
thought from the beholder like the void under a 
cupping-glass raises a swelling. How much a 
silent mankind might suggest ! . . . The moon 
appears to have waned a little, yet with this 
snow on the ground I can plainly see the words 
I write. ... I do not know why such empha- 
sis should be laid on certain events that tran- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 79 

spire, why my news should be so trivial ; consid- 
ering what one's dreams and expectations are, 
why the developments should be so paltry. 
These facts appear to float in the atmosphere, 
insignificant as the sporules of fimgi, and im- 
pinge on my thallus. Some neglected surface 
of my mind affords a basis for them, and hence 
a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves 
clean of such news. Methinks I should hear with 
indifference if a trustworthy messenger were to 
inform me that the sim drowned himself last 
night. 

March 7, 1853. What is the earliest sign 
of spring? The motion of worms and insects? 
The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of 
buds ? Do not the insects awake with the flow 
of the sap? Bluebirds, etc., probably do not 
come till the insects come out. Or are there 
earlier signs in the water, the tortoises, frogs, 
etc. ? The little cup and coccif eras lichens mixed 
with other cladonias of the reindeer moss kind 
are full of fresh fruit to-day. The scarlet 
apothecia of the cocciferae on the stumps and 
earth partly covered with snow, with which they 
contrast, I never saw more fresh and brilliant. 
But they shrivel up and lose their brightness by 
the time you get them home. The only birds I see 
to-day are the lesser redpolls. I have not seen 
a fox-colored sparrow or a Fringilla kiemalis. 



80 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 7, 1854. p. m. To Anursnack. . . . 
Heard the first bluebird, something like joe-a- 
wovy and then other slight warblings as if far- 
ther off. Was surprised to see the bird within 
seven or eight rods on the top of an oak on the 
orchard's edge under the hill. But he appeared 
silent, while I heard others faintly warbling and 
twittering far in the orchard. When he flew 
I heard no more, and then I suspected that he 
had been ventriloquizing, as if he hardly dared 
open his mouth yet while there was so much 
winter left. It is an overcast and moist, but 
rather warm afternoon. He revisits the apple- 
trees and appears to find some worms. Proba- 
bly not till now was his food to be f oimd abun- 
dantly. Saw some fuzzy gnats in the air. . . . 
The river channel is nearly open everywhere. 
Saw on the alders by the river-side front of 
Hildreth's a song -sparrow quirking its tail. 
It flew across the river to the willows, and soon 
I heard its well-known dry tchip-tchip. 

March 7, 1858. Walking by the river this 
p. M., it being half open, and the waves run- 
ning pretty high, the black waves, yellowish 
where they break over ice, I inhale a fresh 
meadowy spring odor from them which is a 
littk exciting. It is like the fragrance of tea 
to an old tea-drinker. 

March 7, 1859. 6^ a. m. To Hill. I 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 81 

came out to hear a spring bird, the ground gen- 
erally covered with snow yet, and the channel 
of the river only partly open. On the hill I 
hear first the tapping of a small woodpecker. 
I then see a bird alight on the dead top of the 
highest white oak on the hilltop, on the topmost 
point. It is a shrike. While I am watching 
him eight or ten rods off, I hear robins down 
below, west of the hill. Then to my surprise 
the shrike begins to sing. It is at first a wholly 
ineffectual and inarticulate sound, without any 
solid tone, a mere hoarse breathing, as if he 
were clearing his throat, unlike any bird that I 
know, a shriU hissing. Then he uttered a kind 
of mew, a very decided mewing, clear and wiry, 
between that of a catbird and the note of the 
nuthatch, as if to lure a nuthatch within his 
reach. Then rose with the sharpest, shrillest 
vibratory or tremulous whistling, or chirruping 
on the very highest key. This high gurgling 
jingle was like some of the notes of a robin 
singing in summer. But they were very short 
spurts in all these directions, though there was 
all this variety. Unless you saw the shrike, it 
would be hard to tell what bird it was. These 
various notes covered considerable time, but 
were sparingly uttered with intervals. It was 
a decided chinking sound, the clearest strain, 
suggesting much ice in the stream. I heard 



82 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

this bird sing once before, but that was also in 
early spring, or about this time. It is said that 
they imitate the notes of other birds in order 
to attract them within their reach. Why then 
have I never heard them sing in the winter ? I 
have seen seven or eight of them the past winter 
quite near. The birds which it imitated, if it 
imitated any this morning, were the catbird and 
the nuthatch, neither of which, probably, would 
it catch. The first is not here to catch. Hear- 
ing a peep I looked up and saw three or four 
birds passing which suddenly descended and 
settled on this oak top. They were robins, but 
the shrike instantly hid himself behind a bough, 
and in half a minute flew off to a walnut and 
alighted, as usual, on its very topmost twig, 
apparently afraid of its visitors. The robins 
kept their ground, one alighting on the very 
point which the shrike vacated. Is not this, 
then, probably the spring note or pairing song 
of the shrike? The first note which I heard 
from the robins far under the hill was sveet 
sveetj suggesting a certain haste and alarm, and 
then a rich, hollow, somewhat plaintive peep or 
peep ' eep ' eep^ as when in distress with young 
just flown. When you first see them alighted, 
they have a taggard, an anxious and hurried 
look. . . . 

The mystery of the life of plants is kindred 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 88 

with that of our own lives, and the physiologist 
must not presume to explain their growth ac- 
cording to mechanical laws, or as he would ex- 
plain a machine of his own making. We must 
not expect to probe with our fingers the sanc- 
tuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable. 
If we do, we shall discover nothing but surface 
still. The ultimate expression or fruit of any 
created thing is a fine effluence which only the 
most ingenuous worshiper perceives at a rever- 
ent distance from its surface even. The cause 
and the effect are equally evanescent and intan- 
gible, and the former must be investigated in 
the same spirit and with the same reverence 
with which the latter is perceived. Science is 
often like the grub which, though it may have 
nestled in the germ of a plant, has merely 
blighted or consumed it, never truly tasted it. 
Only that intellect makes any progress toward 
conceiving of the essence which at the same 
time perceives the effluence. The rude and 
ignorant finger is probing in the rind still, for 
in this case, too, the angles of incidence and 
excidence are equal, and the essence is as far 
on the other side of the surface or matter as 
reverence detains the worshiper on this, and 
only reverence can find out this angle instinc- 
tively. Shall we presume to alter the angle at 
which God chooses to be worshiped? Accord- 



84 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

ingly, I reject Carpenter's explanation of the 
fact that a potato-vine in a cellar grows toward 
the light, when he says, "The reason obviously 
is that in consequence of loss of fluid from the 
tissue of the stem on the side on which the light 
falls, it is contracted, whilst that of the other 
side remains turgid with fluid; the stem makes 
a bend, therefore, imtil its growing point be- 
comes opposite to the light, and then increases 
in that direction."^ 

There is no ripeness which is not, so to speak, 
something ultimate in itself, and not merely a 
perfected means to a higher end. In order to 
be ripe it must serve a transcendent use. The 
ripeness of a leaf, being perfected, leaves the 
tree at that point and never returns to it. It 
has nothing to do with any other fruit which 
the tree may bear, and only genius can pluck 
it. The fruit of a tree is neither in the seed 
nor in the full-grown tree, but it is simply the 
highest use to which it can be put. 

March 8, 1840. The wind shifts from north- 
east and east to northwest and south, and every 
icicle which has tinkled in the meadow grass 
so long trickles down its stem and seeks its 
water level, imerringly, with a million comrades. 
In the ponds the ice cracks with a busy and in- 
spiriting din, and down the larger streams is 

^ Corpenter^s VegetaUe Physiology y p. 174. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 85 

whirled, grating hoarsely and crashing its way 
along, which was so lately a firm field for the 
woodman's team and the fox, sometimes with 
the tracks of the skaters still fresh upon it, and 
the holes cut for pickerel. Town committees 
inspect the bridges and causeways as if by mere 
eye-force to intercede with the ice and save the 
treasury. In the brooks the floating of small 
cakes of ice with various speed is full of con- 
tent and promise, and when the water gurgles 
under a natural bridge you may hear these 
hasty rafts hold conversation in an imdertone. 
Every rill is a channel for the juices of the 
meadow. Last year's grasses and flower stalks 
have been steeped in rain and snow, and now 
the brooks flow with meadow tea, thorough- 
wort, mint, flagroot, and pennyroyal, all at one 
draught. In the ponds the sim makes encroach- 
ments aroimd the edges first, as ice melts in a 
kettle on the fire, darting his rays through this 
crevice, and preparing the deep water to act 
simultaneously on the imder side. 

March 8, 1842. Most lecturers preface their 
discourses on music with a history of music, but 
as well introduce an essay on virtue with a his- 
tory of virtue. As if the possible combinations 
of sound, the last wind that sighed or melody 
that waked the wood, had any history other 
than a perceptive ear might hear in the least 



86 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

and latest sound of nature. A history of music 
would be like the history of the. future, for so 
little past is it and capable of record that it is 
but the hint of a prophecy. It is the history of 
gravitation. It has no history more than God. 
It circulates and resounds forever, and only 
flows like the sea or air. . . . Why, if I should 
sit down to write its story, the west wind would 
rise to refute me. Properly speaking there can 
be no history but natural history, for there 
is no past in the soul, but in nature. ... I 
might as well write the history of my aspira- 
tions. Does not the last and highest contain 
them all? Do the lives of the great compos- 
ers contain the facts which interested them? 
What is this music? Why, thinner and more 
evanescent than ether; subtler than sound, for 
it is only a disposition of sound. It is to sound 
what color is to matter. It is the color of a 
flame, or of the rainbow, or of water. Only 
one sense has known it. The least profitable, 
the least tangible fact, which cannot be bought 
or cultivated but by virtuous methods, and yet 
our ears ring with it like shells left on the 
shore. 

March 8, 1853. 10 a. m. Bode to Saxon- 
ville with F. Browne to look at a small place 
for sale, via Wayland. Return by Sudbury. 
On wheels in snow. A spring sheen on the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 87 

snow. The melting snow running and spark- 
ling down hill in the ruts was quite spring- 
like. . . . Saw a mink run across the road in 
Sudbury, a large, black weasel, to appearance, 
worming its supple way over the snow. Where 
it ran, its tracks were thus, = = = = 
the intervals between the fore and hind feet 
sixteen or eighteen inches, and between the two 
fore and the two hind feet two inches and a 
half. 

The distant view of the open-flooded Sudbury 
meadows all dark blue, surrounded by a land- 
scape of white snow, gave an impulse to the 
dormant sap in my veins. Dark blue and angry 
waves contrasting with the white but melting 
winter landscape. Ponds, of course, do not yet 
afford this water prospect, only the flooded 
meadows. There is no ice over or near the 
stream, and the flood has covered or broken up 
much of the ice on the meadow. The aspect of 
these waters at sunset, when the air is still, be- 
gins to be unspeakably soothing and promising. 
Waters are at length and begin to reflect, and 
instead of looking into the sky, I look into the 
placid reflecting water for the signs and promise 
of the morrow. These meadows are the most 
of ocean that I have fairly learned. Now, 
when the sap of the trees is probably beginning 
to flow, the sap of the earth, the river, over- 



88 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

flows and bursts its icy fetters. This is the sap 
of which I make my sugar after the frosty 
nights, boiling it down and crystallizing it. I 
must be on the lookout now for guUs and the 
ducks. That dark blue meadowy revelation. 
It is as when the sap of the maple bursts forth 
early and runs down the trunk to the snow. 
Saw two or three hawks sailing. . . . Saw 
some very large willow buds expanded (their 
silk) to thrice the length of their scales, in- 
distinctly barred or waved with darker lines 
around them. They look more like, are more 
of spring than anything else I have seen. 
Heard the spring note of the chickadee now 
before any spring bird has arrived. 

3Iarch 8, 1854. What pretty wreaths the 
mountain cranberry makes, curving upward at 
the extremity. The leaves are now a dark red, 
and wreath and all are of such a shape as might 
fitly be copied in wood or stone or architectural 
foliage. 

Match 8, 1855. As the ice melts in the 
swamps I see the horn-shaped buds of the 
skunk-cabbage, green with a bluish bloom, 
standing uninjured, ready to feel the influence 
of the sun, more prepared for spring, to look 
at, than any other plant. 

March 8, 1857. When I cut a white pine 
twig, the crystalline sap at once exudes. How 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 89 

long has it been thus? Got a glimpse of a 
hawk, the first of the season. The tree-spar- 
rows sing a little on the still, sheltered, and 
sunny side of the hill, but not elsewhere. A 
partridge goes from amid the pitch pmes. It 
lifts each wing so high above its back and flaps 
so low and withal so rapidly that it presents the 
appearance of a broad wheel, almost a revolving 
sphere, as it whirs off, like a cannon ball shot 
from a gun. 

March 8, 1859. p. m. To Hill in rain. 
. . . There is a fine freezing rain with strong 
wind from the north, so I keep along under the 
shelter of hills and woods, along the south side, 
in my India-rubber coat and boots. Under the 
southern edge of Woodis Park, in the low 
ground I see many radical leaves of the Soli- 
dago altissima and another, I am pretty sure it 
is the Solidago stricta^ and occasionally, also, 
of the Aster undidatus^ and all are more or 
less lake beneath. The first, at least, have 
when bruised a strong scent. Some of them 
have recently grown decidedly. So at least 
several kinds of golden -rods and asters have 
radical leaves lake-colored at this season. The 
conmion strawberry leaves, too, are quite fresh, 
and a handsome lake color beneath in many 
cases. There are also many little rosettes of 
the radical leaves of the Epilohium coloratum^ 



90 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

half brown and withered, with bright green 
centres, at least. . . . There is but a narrow 
strip of bare ground reaching a few rods into 
the wood along the edge, but the less ground 
there is bare, the more we make of it. Such a 
day as this I resort where the partridges, etc., 
do, to the bare ground and the sheltered sides 
of woods and hills, and there explore the moist 
ground for the radical leaves of plants while the 
storm lowers overhead, and I forget how the 
time is passing. If the weather is thick and 
stormy enough, if there is a good chance to be 
cold and wet and uncomfortable, in other words 
to feel weather-beaten, you may consiune the 
afternoon to advantage, thus browsing along 
the edge of some near wood which would 
scarcely detain you at all in fair weather, and 
you will get as far away there as at the end of 
your longest fair-weather walk, and come home 
as if from an adventure. There is no better 
fence to put between you and the village than a 
storm into which the villagers do not venture 
out. I go looking for green radical leaves. 
What a dim and shadowy existence have now 
to our memories the fair flowers whose localities 
they mark ! How hard to find any trace of their 
stem now, after it has been flattened under the 
snows of the winter. I go feeling with wet and 
freezing fingers amid the withered grass and the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 91 

snow for their prostrate stems, that I may recon- 
struct the plant. But greenness so absorbs my 
attention that sometimes I do not see the former 
rising from the midst of those radical leaves 
when it almost puts my eyes out. The radical 
leaves of the shepherd's purse are particularly 
bright. . . . Men of science, when they pause 
to contemplate the power, wisdom, and goodness 
of God, OP as they sometimes call Him "the 
Almighty Designer," speak of Him as a total 
stranger whom it is necessary to treat with the 
highest consideration. They seem suddenly to 
have lost their wits. 

JUarch 8, 1860. To Cliffs and Walden. 
See a small flock of grackles on the willow row 
above railroad bridge. How they sit and make 
a business of chattering, for it cannot be called 
singing, and there is no improvement from age 
to age, perhaps. Yet as nature is a becoming, 
these notes may become melodious at last. At 
length, on my very near approach, they flit sus- 
piciously away, uttering a few subdued notes as 
they hurry off. This is the first flock of black- 
birds I have chanced to see, though C. saw 
one the 6th. 

To say nothing of fungi, lichens, mosses, and 
other cryptogamous plants, you cannot say that 
vegetation absolutely ceases at any season in 
this latitude. For there is grass in some warm 



92 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

exposures and in springy places always growing 
more or less, and willow catkins expanding and 
peeping out a little farther every warm day 
from the very beginning of winter, and the 
skunk-cabbage buds being developed and act- 
ually flowering sometimes in the winter, and 
the sap flowing in the maples on some days in 
mid-winter, and perhaps some cress growing a 
little (?), certainly some pads, and various 
naturalized garden weeds steadily growing, if 
not blooming, and apple buds sometimes ex- 
panding. Thus much of vegetable life, or mo- 
tion, or growth, is to be detected every winter. 
There is something of spring in aU seasons. 
There is a large class which is evergreen in its 
radical leaves, which make such a show as soon 
as the snow goes off that many take them to be 
a new growth of the spring. In a pool I notice 
that the crowfoot (buttercup) leaves which are 
at the bottom of the water stand up and are 
much more advanced than those two feet off in 
the air, for there they receive warmth from the 
sun, while they are sheltered from cold winds. 
Nowadays we separate the warmth of the sun 
from the cold of the wind, and observe that the 
cold does not pervade all places, but being due 
to strong northwest winds, if we get into some 
sunny and sheltered nook where they do not 
penetrate, we quite forget how cold it is else- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 93 

where. ... I meet some Indians just camped 
on Brister's Hill. As usual, they are chiefly 
concerned to find where black ash grows for 
their baskets. This is what they set about to 
ascertain as soon as they arrive in any strange 
neighborhood. 

March 9, 1852. A warm spring rain in the 
night. 3 P. M. Down the railroad. Cloudy, 
but spring-like. When the frost comes out of 
the ground there is a corresponding thawing of 
the man. The earth is now half bare. These 
March winds, which make the woods roar and 
fill the world with life and bustle, appear to 
wake up the trees out of their winter sleep and 
excite the sap to flow. I have no doubt they 
serve some such use, as well as to hasten the 
evaporation of the snow and water. The rail- 
road men have now their hands full. I hear 
and see bluebirds come with the warm wind. 
The sand is flowing in the deep cut. I am 
affected by the sight of the moist red sand or 
subsoil imder the edge of the sandy bank under 
the pitch pines. The railroad is perhaps our 
pleasantest and wildest road. It only makes 
deep cuts into and through the hills. On it are 
no houses nor foot-travelers. The travel on it 
does not disturb me. The woods are left to 
hang over it. Though straight, it is wild in its 
accompaniments, keeping all its raw edges. 



94 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Even the laborers on it are not like other labor- 
ers. Its houses, if any, are shanties, and its 
ruins the ruins of shanties, shells where the race 
that built the railroad dwelt ; and the bones they 
gnawed He about. I am cheered by the sound 
of running water now down the wooden troughs 
each side the cut. This road breaks the surface 
of the earth. Here is the dryest walking in 
wet weather, and the easiest in snowy. Even 
the sight of smoke from the shanty excites me 
to-day. Already these puddles on the railroad, 
reflecting the pine woods, remind me of summer 
lakes. 

When I hear the telegraph harp I think I 
must read the Greek poets. This sound is like 
a brighter color, red, or blue, or green, where 
all was dull white or black. It prophesies finer 
senses, a finer life, a golden age. It is the 
poetry of the railroad. The heroic and poetic 
thoughts which the Irish laborers had at their 
toil have now got expression, that which has 
made the world mad so long. Or is it the gods 
expressing their delight at this invention? The 
flowing sand bursts out through the snow and 
overflows it where no sand was to be seen. . . . 
Again it rains, and I turn about. The sounds 
of water falling on rocks and of air falling on 
trees are very much alike. Though cloudy, the 
air excites me. Yesterday all was tight as a 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 95 

stricture on my breast. To-day all is loosened. 
It is a different element from what it was. The 
sides of the bushy hill where the snow is melted 
look through this air as if I were under the in- 
fluence of some intoxicating liquor. The earth 
is not quite steady nor palpable to my sense, — 
a little idealized. 

March 9, 1853. Minott thinks, and quotes 
some old worthy as authority for saying, that 
the bark of the striped squirrel is one of the 
first sure signs of decided spring weather. 

March 9, 1854. Saw this morning a musk- 
rat sitting "in a round form on the ice," or 
rather motionless, like the top of a stake or a 
mass of muck on the edge of the ice. He then 
dived for a clam, whose shells he left on the ice 
beside him. 

Boiled a handful of rock tripe (^UrhhUicaria 
Muhlenhergii) (which Tuckerman says "was the 
favorite rock tripe in Franklin's journey ") for 
more than an hour. It produced a bla<5k puff, 
looking somewhat like boiled tea-leaves, and 
was insipid, like rice or starch. The dark 
water in which it was boiled had a bitter taste, 
and was slightly gelatinous. The puff was not 
positively disagreeable to the palate. 

p. M. To Great Meadows. Saw several 
flocks of large grayish and whitish or speckled 
ducks, I suppose the same that P. calls shel- 



96 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

drakes. They, like ducks, commonly incline 
to fly in a line about an equal distance apart. 
I hear the common sort of quacking from them. 
It is pleasant to see them at a distance alight 
on the water with a slanting flight, laimch 
themselves, and sail along so stately. The 
pieces of ice, large and small, drifting along, 
help to conceal them. In the spaces of still, 
open water I see the reflection of the hills and 
woods, which for so long I have not seen, and 
it gives expression to the face of nature. The 
face of nature is lit up by these reflections 
in still water in the spring. Sometimes you 
see only the top of a distant hill reflected far 
within the meadow, where a dull, gray field 
of ice intervenes between the water and the 
shore. 

March 9, 1855. p., m. To Andromeda 
Ponds. Scare up a rabbit on the hillside by 
these ponds which was gnawing a smooth su- 
mach. See also where they have gnawed the 
red maple, sweet fern, Populus grandidentata^ 
white and other oaks (taking off considerable 
twigs at four or five cuts), amelanchier, and 
sallow. But they seem to prefer the smooth 
simiach to any of them. With this variety of 
cheap diet they are not likely to starve. The 
rabbit, indeed, lives, but the simiach may be 
killed. I get a few drops of the sweet red- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 97 

maple juice which has run down the main stem 
where a rabbit has nibbled a twig off close. 

The heartwood of the poison dogwood, when 
I break it down with my hand, has a singular, 
decayed-yellow look, and a spirituous or apothe- 
cary odor. 

As the other day I clambered over those 
great white pine masts which lay in all direc- 
tions, one upon another, on the hillside south 
of Fair Haven, where the woods have been laid 
waste, I was struck, in favorable lights, with the 
jewel-like brilliancy of the sawed ends thickly 
bedewed with crystal drops of turpentine, 
thickly as a shield, as if the Dryads, Oreads, 
pine-wood nyinphs had seasonably wept there 
the fall of the tree. The perfect sincerity of 
these terebinthine drops, each one reflecting 
the world, colorless as light, or like drops of 
dew heaven-distilled and trembling to their fall, 
is incredible when you remember how firm their 
consistency. And is this that pitchy which you 
cannot touch without being defiled? 

Looking from the cliffs, the sun being, as 



GlUb. t^MF' >^ Snn'i place. 




River. 



before, invisible, I saw far more light in the 
reflected sky in the neighborhood of the sun 



98 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

than I could see in the heavens from my posi- 
tion, and it occurred to me that the reason was 
that there was reflected to me from the river 
the view I should have got if I had stood there 
on the water in a more favorable position. I 
see that the sand in the road has crystallized as 
if dried (for it is nearly cold enough to freeze), 
like the first crystals that shoot and set on 
water when freezing. . . . C. says he saw yes- 
terday the slate-colored hawk, with a white bar 
across tail, meadow hawk, i, e., frog hawk. 
Probably it finds moles and mice. 

March 9, 1859. ... At Corner Spring 
Brook the water reaches up to the crossing, 
and stands over the ice there, the brook being 
open and some space each side of it. When I 
look from forty to fifty rods off at the yellowish 
water covering the ice about a foot here, it is 
decidedly purple (though, when I am close by 
and looking down on it, it is yellowish merely), 
while the water of the brook and channel, and 
a rod on each side of it, where there is no ice 
beneath, is a beautiful very dark blue. These 
colors are very distinct, the line of separation 
being the edge of the ice on the bottom; and 
this apparent juxtaposition of different kinds 
of water is a very singular and pleasing sight. 
You see a light purple flood about the color of 
a red grape, and a broad channel of dark pur- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 99 

pie water, as dark as a common blue-purple 
grape, sharply distinct across its middle. 

March 10, 1852. I was reminded this morn- 
ing, before I rose, of those undescribed ambro* 
sial mornings of simimer which I can remem- 
ber, when a thousand birds were heard gently 
twittering and ushering in the light, like the 
argument to a new canto of an epic, a heroic 
poem. The serenity, the infinite promise of 
such a morning I The song or twitter of birds 
drips from the leaves like dew. Then there was 
something divine and immortal in our life, when 
I have waked up on my couch in the woods and 
seen the day dawning and heard the twittering 
of the birds. 

1 see flocks of a dozen bluebirds together. 
The warble of this bird is innocent and celestial 
like its color. Saw a sparrow, perhaps a song- 
sparrow, flitting amid the young oaks where the 
ground was covered with snow. I think that 
this is an indication that the ground is quite 
bare a little further south. Probably the 
spring birds never fly far over a snow-clad 
country. 

I see the reticulated leaves of the rattlesnake 
plantain in the woods quite fresh and green. 
What is the little chickweed-like plant already 
springing up on the top of the cliffs? There 
are some other plants with bright green leaves 



100 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

which have either started somewhat or have 
never suffered from the cold under the snow. 

I am pretty sure that I heard the chuckle of 
a ground squirrel among the warm and bare 
rocks of the cliffs. . . . The mosses are now 
very handsome, like young grass pushing up. 
Heard the phebe note of the chickadee to-day 
for the first time; I had at first heard their 
day^ day^ day^ ungratefully. "Ah! you but 
carry my thoughts back to winter ! " But anon 
I found that they, too, had become spring birds. 
They had changed their note. Even they feel 
the influence of spring. 

I see cup lichens (cladonias) with their cups 
beset inside and out with little leaflets like shell 
work. 

March 10, 1853. This is the first really 
spring day. The sun is brightly reflected from 
all surfaces, and the north side of the street 
begins to be a little more passable to foot-trav- 
elers. You do not think it necessary to button 
up your coat. 

P. M. To Second Division Brook. As I 
stand looking over the river, looking from the 
bridge into the flowing, eddying tide, the almost 
strange chocolate-colored water, the sound of 
distant crows and cocks is full of spring. As 
Anacreon says "the works of men shine," so 
the sounds of men and birds are musical. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 101 

Something analogous to the thawing of the ice 
seems to have taken place in the air. At the 
end of winter there is a season in which we are 
daily expecting spring, and finally, a day when 
it arrives. . . • The radical leaves of innumer- 
able plants (as here a dock in and near the 
water) are evidently affected by the spring in- 
fluences. Many plants are to some extent ever- 
green, like the buttercup now beginning to 
start. Methinks the first obvious evidence of 
spring is the pushing out of the swamp-willov. 
catkins, the pushing up of skunk-cabbage 
spathes, and pads at the bottom of water. This 
is the order I am inclined to, though perhaps 
any of these may take precedence of all the rest 
in any particular case. What is that dark 
pickle-green alga (?) at the bottom of this ditch, 
looking somewhat like a decaying cress, with 
fruit like a lichen? 

At Nut Meadow Brook Crossing we rest 
awhile on the rail, gazing into the eddying 
stream. The ripple marks on the sandy bottom 
where silver spangles shine in the sun, with 
black wrecks of caddis casts lodged under each, 
the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting 
prismatic colors on the bottom, the minnows 
already stemming the current with restless, 
wiggling tails, ever and anon darting aside, 
probably to secure some invisible mote in the 



102 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

water, whose shadows we do not at first detect 
on the sandy bottom, though, when detected, 
they are so much more obvious as well as 
larger and more interesting than the substance, 
in which each fin is distinctly seen, though 
scarcely to be detected in the substance, these 
are all very beautiful and exhilarating sights, a 
sort of diet drink to heal our winter discontent. 
Have the minnows played thus all winter? The 
equisetum at the bottom has freshly grown sev- 
eral inches. Then should I not have given the 
precedence on the other page to this and some 
other water plants? I suspect that I should, 
and the flags appear to be starting. I am sur- 
prised to find on the rail a young tortoise 1 ^^^ 
inches long in the shell, which has crawled out 
to sun or perchauce is on its way to the water. 
I think it must be the Emys guttata^ for there 
is a large and distinct yellow spot on each dor- 
sal and lateral plate, and the third dorsal plate 
is hexagonal and not quadrangular, as that of 
the Emys picta is described as being, though in 
my specimen I can't make it out to be so. Yet 
the edges of the plates are prominent as de- 
scribed in the Emys sculpta^ which, but for the 
spots, two yellow spots on each side of the hind 
head, and one fainter on the top of the head, I 
should take it to be. It is about seven eighths 
of an inch wide, very inactive. When was it 
hatched and where? 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 103 

What IS the theory of these sudden pitches 
of deep shelving places in the sandy bottom of 
the brook? It is very interesting to walk along 
such a brook as this in the midst of the meadow, 
which you can better do now before the frost is 
quite out of the sod, and gaze into the deep 
holes in its irregular bottom and the dark gulfs 
under the banks. Where it rushes over the 
edge of a steep slope in the bottom, the shadow 
of the disturbed surface is like sand hurried 
forward in the water. The bottom being of 
shifting sand is exceedingly irregular and inter- 
esting. 

What was that sound that came on the soft- 
ened air? It was the warble of the first blue- 
bird from that scraggy apple orchard yonder. 
When this is heard then has spring arrived. 

It must be that the willow twigs, both the 
yellow and green, are brighter colored than be- 
fore; I cannot be deceived. They shine as if 
the sap were already flowing under the bark, a 
certain lively and glossy hue they have. The 
early poplars are pushing forward their catkins, 
though they make not so much display as the 
willows. Still, in some parts of the woods it is 
good sledding. At Second Division Brook, the 
fragrance of the senecio, decidedly evergreen, 
which I have bruised, is very permanent. It is 
a memorable, sweet, meadow fragrance. I find 



104 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

a yellow-spotted tortoise, Emys guttata^ in the 
bank. A very few leaves of cowslips, and those 
wholly under water, show themselves yet. The 
leaves of the water saxifrage, for the most part 
frost-bitten, are common enough. . . . 

Minott says that old Sam Nutting, the hunter. 
Fox Nutting, old Fox he was called, who died 
more than forty years ago (he lived in Jacob 
Baker's home in Lincoln, came from Weston, 
and was some seventy years old when he died), 
told him that he had killed not only bears about 
Fair Haven among the walnuts, but moose. 

March 10, 1854. Misty rain, rain. The 
third day of more or less rain. 

p. M. C. Miles road via Clam - shell Hill. 
... It occurs to me that heavy rains and sud- 
den meltings of the snow, such as we had a fort- 
night ago (February 26th), before the ground is 
thawed, so that all the water, instead of being 
soaked up by the ground, flows rapidly into the 
streams and ponds, are necessary to swell and 
break them up. If we waited for the direct in- 
fluence of the sun on the ice, and the influence 
of such water as would reach the river under 
other circiunstances, the spring would be very 
much delayed. In the violent freshet there is a 
mechanic force added to the chemic. . . . 

Saw a skunk in the comer road, which I fol- 
lowed sixty rods or more. Out now, about 4 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 106 

P. M., partly because it is a dark, foul day. It 
is a slender, black (and white) animal, with its 
back remarkably arched, standing high behind, 
and carrying its head low; it runs, even when 
undisturbed, with a singular teter or undulation, 
like the walking of a Chinese lady. Very slow ; 
I hardly have to run to keep up with it. It has 
a long tail which it regularly erects when I 
come too near, and prepares to discharge its 
liquid. It is white at the end of the tail, on the 
hind head, and in a line on the front of the 
face. The rest black, except the flesh-colored 
nose (and, I think, feet). ... It tried repeat- 
edly to get into the wall, and did not show much 
cunning. Finally, it steered for an old skunk 
or woodchuck hole under a wall four rods off 
and got into it, or under the wall, at least, for 
the hole was stopped up. There I could view 
it closely and at leisure. It has a remarkably 
long, narrow, pointed head and snout which en- 
able it to make those deep narrow holes in the 
earth by which it probes for insects. Its eyes 
are bluish-black, and have an innocent, child- 
like expression. It made a singular loud pat- 
ting sound repeatedly on the frozen ground un- 
der the wall, undoubtedly with its fore feet. (I 
saw only the upper part of the animal.) . . . 
Probably it has to do with gettmg its food, pat- 
ting the earth to get the insects or worms, 



106 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

though why it did so then, I know not. Its 
track was small and round, showing the nails, a 
little less than an inch in diameter. Its steps 
alternate, five or six inches by two or two and 
a half, sometimes two feet together. There is 
something pathetic in such a sight, next to see- 
ing one of the human aborigines of the country. 
I respect the skunk as a human being in a very 
humble sphere. I have no doubt they have be- 
g^un to probe already where the ground permits, 
or as far as it does. But what have they eat all 
winter ? 

The weather is almost April-like. We always 
have much of this rainy, drizzling weather in 
early spring, after which we expect to hear 
geese. 

March 10, 1855. I am not aware of growth 
in any plant yet, imless it be tlie further peep- 
ing out of the willow catkins. They have crept 
out further from under the scales, and looking 
closely I detect a little redness along the twigs 
even now. 

You are always surprised by the sight of the 
first spring bird or insect. They seem prema- 
ture, and there is no such evidence of spring as 
themselves, so that they literally fetch the year 
about. It is thus when I hear the first robin 
or bluebird, or looking along the brooks see 
the first water-bugs out, circling. But you 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 107 

think they have come and nature cannot recede. 
Thus, when, on the 6th, I saw the gyrinus at 
Second Division Brook. I saw no peculiarity 
in the water or the air to remind me of them, 
but to-day they are here and yesterday they 
were not. I go looking deeper for tortoises, 
when suddenly my eye rests on these black cir- 
cling apple-seeds in some smoother bay. 

The red squirrel should be drawn with a pine 
cone. . . . 

Jacob Farmer gave me to-day a part of the 
foot, probably of a pine marten, which he found 
two or three days ago in a trap he had set in 
his brook under water for a mink, baited with 
a pickerel. It is colored above with glossy 
dark brown hair, and contains but two toes, 
armed with fine and very sharp talons, much 
curved. There may be a third without the 
talon. It had left thus much in the trap and 
departed. 

March 10, 1859. There are some who never 
do nor say anything, whose life merely excites 
expectation. Their excellence reaches no fur- 
ther than a gesture or mode of carrying them- 
selves. They are a sash dangling from the waist, 
or a sculptured war-club over the shoulder. 
They are like fine-edged tools gradually becom- 
ing rusty in a shop window. I like as well, if 
not better, to see a piece of iron or steel, out of 



108 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

which many such tools will be made, or the 
bushwhack in a man's hand. 

When I meet gentlemen and ladies I am re- 
minded of the extent of the habitable and unin- 
habitable globe. I exclaim to myself: Sur- 
faces ! surfaces ! If the outside of a man is so 
variegated and extensive, what must the inside 
be ? You are high up the Platte River, travers- 
ing deserts, plains covered with soda, with no 
deeper hollow than a prairie-dog hole, tenanted 
also by owls and venomous snakes. 

As I look toward the woods from Wood's 
Bridge, I perceive the spring in the softened air. 
This is to me the most interesting and afifecting 
phenomenon of the season as yet. Apparently, 
in consequence of the very warm sun, this still 
and clear day, falling on the earth four fifths 
covered with snow and ice, there is an almost 
invisible vapor held in suspension, which is like 
a thin coat or enamel applied to every object, 
and especially it gives to the woods of pine and 
oak, intermingled, a softened and more living 
appearance. They evidently stand in a more 
genial atmosphere than before. Looking more 
low I see that shimmering in the air over the 
earth which betrays the evaporation going on. 
Looking through this transparent vapor, all 
surfaces, not osiers and open water alone, look 
more vivid. The hardness of winter is relaxed* 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 109 

There is a fine effluence surrounding the wood, 
as if the sap had begun to stir, and you could 
detect it a mile off. Such is the difference in 
an object seen through a warm, moist, and soft 
air, and a cold, dry, hard one. Such is the 
genialness of nature that the trees appear to 
have put out feelers, by which the senses appre- 
hend them more tenderly. I do not know that 
the woods are ever more beautiful or affect me 
more. 

I feel it to be a greater success as a lecturer 
to affect uncultivated natures than to affect the 
most refined, for all cultivation is necessarily 
superficial, and its root may not even be di- 
rected toward the centre of the being. . . . 

Look up or down the open river channel now 
so smooth. Like a hibernating animal, it has 
ventured to come out to the mouth of its bur- 
row. One way, perhaps, it is like melted silver 
alloyed with copper. It goes nibbling off the 
edge of the thick icfe on each side. Here and 
there I see a musquash sitting in the sun on the 
edge of the ice, eating a clam, and the shells it 
has left are strewn along the edge. Ever and 
anon he drops into the liquid mirror and soon 
reappears with another clam. 

This clear, placid, silvery water is evidently 
a phenomenon of spring. Winter could not 
show us this. ... As we sit in this wonderful 



110 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

air, many sounds — that of woodchopping for 
one — come to our ears, agreeably blunted, or 
muffled even, like the drumming of a partridge, 
not sharp aad rending a« in winter and recently. 
If a partridge should drum in winter, probably 
it would not reverberate so softly through the 
wood, and sound indefinitely far. Our voices 
even sound differently, and betray the spring. 
We speak as in a house, in a warm apartment 
still, with relaxed muscles and softened voices. 
The voice, like a woodchuck in his burrow, is 
met and lapped in and encouraged by all genial 
and sunny influences. There may be heard 
now, perhaps, imder south hillsides and the 
south sides of houses, a slight murmur of con- 
versation, as of insects, out of doors. 

These earliest spring days are peculiarly 
pleasant; we shall have no more of them for a 
year. I am apt to forget that we may have raw 
and blustering days a month hence. The com- 
bination of this delicious air, which you do not 
want to be warmer or softer, with the presence 
of ice and snow, you sitting on the bare russet 
portions, the south hillsides of the earth, — this 
is the charm of these days. It is the summer- 
beginning to show itself, like an old friend, in 
the midst of winter. You ramble from one 
drier russet patch to another. These are your 
stages. You have the air and sun of simmier 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS HI 

over snow and ice, and in some places even the 
rnsding of dry leaves under your feet, as in 
Indian-summer days. 

The bluebird on the apple-tree, warbling so 
innocently, to inquire if any of its mates are 
within call, — the angel of the spring ! Fair 
and innocent, yet the offspring of the earth. 
The color of the sky, ahove^ and of the subsoil, 
beneath^ suggesting what sweet and innocent 
melody, terrestrial melody, may have its birth- 
place between the sky and the ground. 

March 11, 1842. We can only live healthily 
the life the gods assign us. I must receive my 
life as passively as the willow leaf that flutters 
over the brook. I must not be for myself, but 
God's work, and that is always good. I will 
wait the breezes patiently, and grow as they 
shall determine. My fate cannot but be grand 
so. We may live the life of a plant or an ani- 
mal without living an animal life. This con- 
stant and universal content of the animal comes 
of resting quietly in God's palm. I feel as if I 
could at any time resign my life and the respon- 
sibility into God's hands, and become as inno- 
cent and free from care as a plant or stone. 

My life! my life! why will you linger? Are 
the years short and the months of no account? 
. . . Can God afiford that I should forget him? 
Is he so indifferent to my career? Can heaven 



112 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

be postponed with no more ado? Why were 
my ears given to hear those everlasting strains 
which haimt my life, and yet to be profaned by 
these perpetual dull soimds? . . . Why, God, 
did yoii include me in your great scheme? Will 
you not make me a partner at last? Did it 
need there should be a conscious material? 

My friend ! my friend ! I 'd speak so frank 
to thee that thou wouldst pray me to keep back 
some part of it, for fear I robbed myself. To 
address thee delights me, there is such clear- 
ness in the delivery. I am delivered of my 
tale, which, told to strangers, still would linger 
in my life as if untold, or doubtful how it 
ran. 

March 11, 1854. Fair weather after three 
rainy days. Air full of birds, — bluebirds, 
song-sparrows, chickadees (phebe-notes), and 
blackbirds. Song-sparrows toward the water 
with at least two kinds or variations of their 
strain hard to imitate, — ozit^ ozity ozit^ psa te 

qnlok 

te te tete ter twe ter^ is one. The other began 
chip^ chip che we, etc., etc. 

Bluebirds' warbling curls in elms. 

Shall the earth be regarded as a graveyard, 
a necropolis merely, and not also as a granary 
filled with the seeds of life, fertile compost, not 
exhausted sand? Is not its fertility increased 
by decay? 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 113 

On Tuesday, the 7tli, I heard the first song- 
sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder 
to alder. This pleasant morning, after three 
days' rain and mist, they generally burst forth 
into sprayey song from the low trees along the 
river. The development of their song is grad- 
ual, but sure, like the expanding of a flower. 
This is the first song I have heard. 

p. M. To Cliffs. Kiver higher than at any 
time in the winter, I think. . . . Muskrats 
are driven out of their holes. Heard one's 
loud plash behind Hubbard's. It comes up 
brown, striped with wet. I could detect its 
progress beneath, in shallow water, by the bub- 
bles which came up. . • • From the hill, the 
river and meadow are about equally water and 
ice, — rich, blue water, and islands or conti- 
nents of white ice, no longer ice in place. The 
distant mountains are aU white with snow, while 
our landscape is nearly bare. 

Another year I must observe the alder and 
willow sap as early as the middle of February 
at least. . . • Nowadays, where snow-banks 
have partly melted against the banks by the 
roadside in low ground, I see in the grass nu- 
merous galleries where the mice or moles have 
worked in the winter, 

March 11, 1855. At this season, before 
grass springs to conceal them, I notice those 



114 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

pretty little roundish shells on the tops of hills; 
one to-day on Anursnack. 

I see pitch pine needles looking as if white- 
washed, thickly covered on each of the two 
slopes of the needle with narrow white oyster- 
shell-like latebrse or chrysalids of insects. 

March 11, 1856. When it is proposed to 
me to go abroad, rub off some rust, and better 
my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my 
life would lose some of its homeliness. If these 
fields, and streams, and woods, the phenomena 
of nature here, and the simple occupations of 
the inhabitants should cease to interest and in- 
spire me, no culture or wealth would atone for 
the loss. I fear the dissipation that traveling, 
going into society, even the best, the enjoyment 
of intellectual luxuries, imply. If Paris is 
much in your mind, if it is more and more to 
you. Concord is less and less, and yet it would 
be a wretched bargain to accept the proudest 
Paris in exchange for my native village. At 
best, Paris could only be a school in which to 
learn to live here, a stepping-stone to Concord, 
a school in which to fit for this imiversity. I 
wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfac- 
tions and inspirations from the commonest 
events, every-day phenomena, so that what my 
senses hourly perceive in my daily walk, the 
conversations of my neighbors, may inspire me, 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 115 

and I may dream of no heaven but that which 
lies about me. A man may acquire a taste for 
wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, 
but should we not pity him? The sight of a 
marsh hawk in Concord meadows is worth more 
to me than the entry of the allies into Paris. 
In this sense I am not ambitious. I do not 
wish my native soil to become exhausted and 
run out through neglect. Only that traveling 
is good which reveals to me the value of home 
and enables me to enjoy it better. That man 
is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. 

It is strange that men are in such haste to 
get fame as teachers rather than knowledge as 
learners. 

March 11, 1857. I see and talk with Rice 
sawing off the ends of clapboards, which he has 
planed to make them square, for an addition to 
his house. He has a fire in his shop and plays 
at house-building there. His life is poetic. 
He does the work himself. He combines sev- 
eral qualities and talents rarely combined. 
Though he owns houses in the city whose re- 
pairs he attends to, finds tenants for them, and 
collects the rent, he also has his Sudbury farm 
and beanfield. Though he lived in a city, he 
would still be natural, and related to primitive 
nature around him. Though he owned all Bea- 
con Street, you might find that his mittens were 



116 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

made of the skin of a woodchuck that had rav- 
aged his beanfield. I noticed a woodchuck' s 
skin tacked up to the inside of his shop. He 
said it had fatted on his beans and WiUiam had 
killed it, and expected to get another to make a 
pair of mittens of, one not being quite large 
enough. It was excellent for mittens; you 
could hardly wear it out. Spoke of the cuckoo, 
which was afraid of other birds, was easily 
beaten, would dive into the middle of a poplar, 
then come out on to some bare twig and look 
round for a nest to rob of young or eggs. 

March 11, 1859. Mrs. A. takes on dole- 
fully on account of the solitude in which she 
lives ; but she gets little consolation. Mrs. B. 
says she envies her that retirement. Mrs. A. 
is aware that she does, and says it is as if a 
thirsty man should envy another the river in 
which he is drowning. So goes the world, it is 
either this extreme or that. Of solitude, one 
gets too much ; another, not enough. 

March 11, 1860. I see a woodchuck out on 
the calm side of Lee's Hill (Nawshawtuck). 
He has pushed away the withered leaves which 
filled his hole, and come forth, and left his 
tracks on those slight patches of the recent 
snow which are left about his hole. 

I was amused with the behavior of two red 
squirrels, as I approached the hemlocks. They 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 117 

were as gray as red, and white beneath. I at 
first heard a faint, sharp chirp, like a bird, 
within the hemlock, on my account, and then 
one rushed forward on a descending limb to- 
ward me, barking or chirruping at me after his 
fashion, within a rod. They seemed to vie with 
one another who should be most bold. For 
four or five minutes at least they kept up an 
incessant chirruping or squeaking bark, vibrat- 
ing their tails and their whole bodies, and fre- 
quently changing their position or point of view, 
making a show of rushing forward, or perhaps 
darting off a few feet like lightning, and bark- 
ing stiU more loudly, i. c, with a yet sharper 
exclamation, as if frighten;d by their own mo- 
tions, their whole bodies quivering, their heads 
and great eyes on the qui vive. You are uncer- 
tain whether it is not partly in sport, after all. 

March 11, 1861. The seed of the willow is 
exceedingly minute, as I measure, from one 
twentieth to one twelfth of an inch in length 
and one fourth as much in width. It is sur- 
rounded at base by a tuft of cotton-like hairs, 
about one quarter of an inch long, rising around 
and above it, forming a kind of parachute. 
These render it more buoyant than the seeds of 
any other of our trees, and it is borne the fur- 
thest horizontally with the least wind. It falls 
very slowly even in the still air of a chamber. 



118 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

and rapidly ascends over a stove. It floats 
more like a mote than the seed of any other of 
our trees, in a meandering manner, and, being 
enveloped in this tuft of cotton, the seed is 
hard to detect. Each of the numerous little 
pods, more or less ovate and beaked, which 
form the fertile catkin, is closely packed with 
down and seeds. At maturity these pods open 
their beaks, which curve back, and gradually 
discharge their burden, like the milk-weed. It 
would take a delicate gin indeed to separate 
these seeds from their cotton. 

If you lay bare any spot in our woods, how- 
ever sandy, as by a railroad cut, no shrub or 
tree is surer to plant itself there, sooner or 
later, than a willow {Salix humilis^ commonly) 
or a poplar. We have many kinds, but each 
is confined to its own habitat. I am not aware 
that the Salix nigra has ever strayed from the 
river's bank. Though many of the Salix alba 
have been set along our causeways, very few 
have sprimg up and maintained their ground 
elsewhere. 

The principal habitat of most of our species, 
such as love the water, is the river's bank and 
the adjacent river meadows, and when certain 
kinds spring up in an inland meadow where 
they were not known before, I feel pretty cer- 
tain that they come from the river meadows. I 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 119 

have but little doubt that the seed of four of 
them that grow along the railroad causeway was 
blown from the river meadows, namely, Salix 
pedicellaris^ lucida^ Torreyana^ and petiolaris. 

The barren and fertile flowers are usually on 
separate plants. The greater part of the white 
willows set out on our causeways are sterile 
only. You can easily distinguish the fertile 
ones at a distance when the pods are bursting. 
It is said that no sterile weeping willows have 
been introduced into this country, so that it 
cannot be raised from the seed. Of two of the 
indigenous willows common along the bank of 
our river I have detected but one sex. 

The seeds of the willow thus annually fill the 
air with their lint, being wafted to all parts of 
the country, and though apparently not more 
than one in many millions gets to be a shrub, 
yet so lavish and persevering is Nature that her 
purpose is completely answered. 

March 12, 1842. Consider what a differ- 
ence there is between living and dying. To 
die is not to begin to die and continue^ it is not 
a state of continuance, but of transientness ; 
whereas to live is a condition of continuance, 
and does not mean to be born merely. There 
is no continuance of death. It is a transient 
phenomenon. Nature presents nothing in a 
state of death. 



120 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 12, 1852. According to Linnaeus 
very many plants become perennial and arbores- 
cent in warm regions, wluch with us are annual, 
for duration often depends more on the locality 
than on the plant. So is it with men. Under 
more favorable conditions, the human plant 
that is short-lived and dwarfed becomes peren- 
nial and arborescent. 

I have learned in a shorter time and more 
accurately the meaning of the scientific terms 
used in botany from a few plates of figures at 
the end of the "Philosophia Botanica," with 
the names annexed, than a volume of explana- 
tions or glossaries could teach. And, that the 
alternate pages may not be left blank, Linnseus 
has given on them very concise and important 
instruction to students of botany. This law- 
giver of science, this systematizer, this method- 
izer, carries his system into his studies in the 
field. On one of the little pages he gives some 
instruction concerning "herbatio" or botaniz- 
ing. Into this he introduces law, order, and 
system, and describes with the greatest economy 
of words what some would have required a small 
voliune to tell, all on a small page ; tells what 
drefes you shall wear, what instruments you 
shall carry, what season and hours you shall 
observe, namely, "from the leafing of the trees, 
Sirius excepted, to the fall of the leaf, twice a 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 121 

week in glimmer, once, in spring; from seven 
in the morning till seven at night;'' when you 
shall dine and take your rest, etc., whether you 
shall botanize in a crowd or dispersed, etc., 
how far you shall go, two miles and a half, at 
most; what you shall collect, what kind of ob« 
servations make, etc., etc. 

Railroad to Walden, 3 p. M. I see the Popu* 
luB (apparently tremvloides^ not grandidentatd) 
at the end of the railroad causeway, showing 
the down of its ament. Bigelow makes the 
tremvloides flower in April, the grandidentata 
in May. . . . The little grain of wheat, triti- 
cum, is the noblest food of man, the lesser 
grains of other grasses are the food of passerine 
birds at present. Their diet is like man's. 

The gods can never afford to leave a man in 
the world who is privy to any of their secrets. 
They cannot have a spy here. They will at once 
send him packing. How can you walk on 
ground where you see through it? 

The telegraph harp has spoken to me more 
distinctly and effectually than any man ever 
did. 

March 12, 1853. It is essential that a man 
confine himself to pursuits, a scholar, foe in- 
stance, to studies which lie next to and conduce 
to his life, which do not go against the grain 
either of his will or his imagination. The 



122 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

scholar finds in his experience some studies to 
be most fertile and radiant with light, others, 
dry, barren, and dark. If he is wise, he will 
not persevere in the last, as a plant in a cellar 
will strive towards the light. He will confine 
the observations of his mind as closely as pos- 
sible to the experience or life of his senses. 
His thought must live with and be inspired 
with the life of the body. The death-bed 
scenes even of the best and wisest afford but a 
sorry picture of our humanity. Some men en- 
deavor to live a constrained life, to subject 
their whole lives to their will, as he who said 
he would give a sign, if he were conscious, after 
his head was cut off, but he gave no sign. 
Dwell as near as possible to the channel in 
which your life flows. A man may associate 
with such companions, he may pursue such 
employments, as will darken the day for him. 
Men choose darkness rather than light. 

p. M. Saw the first lark rise from the rail- 
road causeway and sail on quivering wing over 
the meadow to alight on a heap of dirt. 

Was that a mink we saw at the boiling 
spring? The senecio was very forward there in 
the water, and it still scents my fingers. A 
very lasting odor it leaves. ... It is a rare 
lichen day. The usnea with its large fruit is 
very rich on the maples in the swamp, luxui'iat- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 123 

ing in this moist, overcast, melting day, but 
it is impossible to get it home in good condi- 
tion. 

Looking behind the bark of a dead white 
pine I find plenty of gnats quite lively and 
ready to issue forth as soon as the sun comes 
out. The grubs there are sluggish, buried in 
the chanhings. I took off some pieces of bark 
more than three feet long and one foot wide. 
Between this and the wood, in the dust left 
by borers, the gnats were concealed, ready ta 
swarm. This is their hibernaculum. 

The rich red-brown leaves of the gnaphalium, 
downy white beneath, begin to attract me where 
the snow is off. 

March 12, 1854. a. m. Up railroad to 
woods. We have white frosts these mornings. 
This is the blackbird morning. Their sprayey 
notes and conqueree ring with the song-spar- 
row's jingle all along the river. Thus grad- 
ually they acquire confidence to sing. It is a 
beautiful spring morning. I hear my first 
robin peep distinctly at a distance on some 
higher trees, oaks or other, on a high key, no 
singing yet. I hear from an apple-tree a faint 
cricket-like chirp, and a sparrow darts away, 
flying far, dashing from side to side. I think 
it must be the white-in-tail or grass finch. I 
hear a jay loudly screaming, phe-phay^ phe-r 



124 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

phay^ a loud, shrill chickadee's phe-hee. I see 
and hear the lark sitting with head erect, neck 
outstretched, in the middle of a pasture, and I 
hear another far off, singing. They sing when 
they first come. All these birds do their war- 
bling especially in the still sunny hour after 
sunrise. Now is the time to be abroad to hear 
them, as you detect the slightest ripple in 
smooth water. As with tinkling sounds the 
sources of streams burst their icy fetters, so the 
rills of music begin to flow and swell the gen- 
eral choir of spring. Memorable is the warm 
light of the spring sun on russet fields in the 
morning. 

p. M. To Ball's Hill along river. My com- 
panion tempts me to certain licenses of speech, 
i. c, to reckless and sweeping expressions 
which I am wont to regret that I have used. I 
find that I have used more harsh, extravagant, 
and cynical expressions concerning mankind 
and individuals than I intended. I find it diffi- 
cult to make to him a sufficiently moderate 
statement. I think it is because I have not his 
sympathy in my sober and constant view. He 
asks for a paradox, an eccentric statement, and 
too often I give it to him. 

Saw some small ducks, teal or widgeons. 

This great expanse of deep blue water, 
deeper than the sky, why does it not blue my 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 126 

soul, as of yore ? It is hard to soften me now. 
• . . The time was when this great blue scene 
would have tinged my spirit more. 

. Now is the time to look for Indian relics, the 
sandy fields being just bared. 

I stSmd on the high lichen -covered and col- 
ored (greenish) hill beyond Abner Buttrick's, I 
go further east and look across the meadows 
to Bedford, and see that peculiar scenery of 
March in which I have taken so many rambles; 
the earth just bare and beginning to be dry, the 
snow lying on the north sides of hiUs, the gray, 
deciduous trees, and the green pines soughing 
in the March wind. They look now as if de- 
serted by a companion, the snow. When you 
walk over bare, lichen-clad hills, just beginning 
to be dry, and look afar over the blue water on 
the meadows, you are beginning to break up 
your winter quarters and plan adventures for 
the new year. The scenery is like, yet unlike, 
November. You have the same barren russet, 
but now instead of a dry, hard, cold wind, a 
peculiarly soft, moist air, or else a raw wind. 
Now is the reign of water. I see many crows 
on the water's edge these days. It is astonish- 
ing how soon the ice has gone out of the river. 
But it still lies on the bottom of the meadow. 

Is it peculiar to the song-sparrow to dodge 
behind and hide in walls and the like? 



126 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Toward night the water becomes smooth and 
beautiful. Men are eager to launch their boats 
and paddle over the meadows. 

March 12, 1856. I never saw such solid 
mountains of snow in the roads. You travel 
along for many rods over excellent, dry, solid 
sleighing where the road is perfectly level, not 
thinking but you are within a foot of the 
ground, then suddenly descend four or five 
feet, and find, to your surprise, that you had 
been traversing the broad back of a drift. 

March 12, 1857. p. m. To Hill. Observe 
the waxwork twining about the smooth sumach. 
It winds against the sun. It is at first loose 
about the stem, but this erelong expands and 
overgrows it. 

Observed the track of a squirrel in the snow 
under one of the apple-trees on the southeast 
side of the hill, and looking up saw a red squir- 
rel with a nut or piece of frozen apple (?) in his 
mouth within six feet, sitting in a constrained 
position, partly crosswise, on a limb over my 
head, perfectly still, and looking not at me, but 
off into the air, evidently expecting to escape 
my attention by this trick. I stood, and 
watched and chirruped to him about five min- 
utes, so near, and yet he did not once turn his 
head to look at me, or move a foot, or wink. 
The only motion was that of his tail curled over 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 127 

his back in the wind. At length he did change 
his attitude a little and look at me a moment. 
Evidently this is a trick they often practice. 
if I had been farther off, he might have scolded 
at me. 

March 12, 1859. p. m. In rain to Minis- 
terial Swamp. ... As I passed the J 

Hosmer (rough-cast) house, I thought I never 
saw any bank so handsome as the russet hillside 
behind it. It is a very barren, exhausted soil 
where the cladonia lichens abound, and the 
lower side is a flowing sand, but this russet 
grass, with its weeds, being saturated with 
moisture, was, in this light, the richest brown, 
methought, that I ever saw. There was the pale 
brown of the grass, red-brown of some weeds 
(sarothra and pinweed, probably), dark brown 
of huckleberry and sweet fern stems, and the 
very visible green of the cladonias, thirty rods 
off, and the rich brown fringes where the broken 
sod hung over the sand-bank. . . . On some 
knolls these vivid and rampant licheuLS as it 
were, dwarf the oaks. A peculiar and unac- 
countable light seemed to fall on that bank or 
hillside, though it was thick storm all around. 
A sort of Newfoundland sun seemed to be shin- 
ing on it. It was such a light that you looked 
round for the sun from which it might come. 
• . . It was a prospect to excite a reindeer. 



128 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

These tints of brown were as softly and richly- 
fair and sufficing as the most brilliant autiunnal 
tints. In fair and dry weather these spots may 
be commonplace. But now they are worthy to 
tempt the painter's brush. The picture should 
be the side of a barren, lichen-clad hill with a 
flowing sand-bank beneath, a few blackish 
huckleberty bushes scattered about, and bright, 
white patches of snow here and there in the 
ravines, the hill running east and west, and 
seen through the storm from a point twenty or 
thirty rods south. 

March 13, 1841. How alone must our life 
be lived. We dwell on the seashore, and none 
between us and the sea. Men are my merry 
companions, my fellow-pilgrims, who beguile 
the way, but leave me at the first turn in the 
road, for none are traveling one road so far as 
myself. Each one marches in the van. The 
weakest child is exposed to the fates hence- 
forth as barely as its parents. Parents and 
relatives but entertain the youth. They cannot 
stand between him and his destiny. This is 
the one bare side of every man. There is no 
fence. It is clear before him to the bounds of 
space. 

What is fame to a living man? If he live 
aright the sound of no man's voice will resound 
through the aisles of his secluded life. His life 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 129 

is a hallowed silence, a pool. The loudest sounds 
have to thank my little ear that they are heard. 

March 13, 1842. The sad memory of de- 
parted friends is soon inerusted over with sub- 
lime and pleasing thoughts, as their monuments 
are overgrown with moss. Nature doth thus 
kindly heal every wound. By the mediation 
of a thousand little mosses and fungi the most 
unsightly objects become radiant with beauty. 
There seem to be two sides of this world pre- 
sented to us at different times, as we see things 
in growth or dissolution, in life or death. For 
seen with the eye of a poet, as God sees them, 
all things are alive and beautiful, but seen with 
the historical eye, or the eye of memory, they 
are dead and offensive. If we see Nature as« 
pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; 
but seen as progressing she is beautiful. 

1 am startled that God can make me so rich 
even with my own cheap stores. It needs but 
a few wisps of straw in the sun, some small 
word dropped, or that has long lain silent in 
some book. When heaven begins and the dead 
arise no trumpet is blown. Perhaps the south 

wind will blow. 

March 13, 1853. 6 a. m. To Cliffs. There 
begins to be a greater depth of saffron in the 
morning sky. The morning and evening hori- 
zon fires are warmer to the eye. 



130 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 13, 1855. p. m. To Hubbard's 
Close. . . . Coming through the stubble of 
Stow's rye-field in front of the Breed House, I 
meet with four mice nests in going half a dozen 
rods. They lie flat on the ground amid the 
stubble, flattened spheres, the horizontal diame- 
ter about five inches, the perpendicular consid- 
erably less, composed of grass or finer stubble. 
On taking them up you do not at once detect 
the entrance with your eye, but rather feel it 
with your finger on the side. They are lined 
with the finest of the grass. These were proba- 
bly made when the snow was on the ground, for 
their winter residence while they gleaned the 
rye-field, and when the snow went off, they 
scampered to the woods. I think they were 
made by the Mus leucoims^ i. e., Arvida Em- 
monsii. 

I look at many woodchuck's holes, but as yet 
they are choked with leaves. There is no sign 
that their occupants have come abroad. 

March 13, 1859. I see a small flock of 
blackbirds flying over, some rising, others fall- 
ing, yet all advancing together, one flock, but 
many birds, some silent, others tchuching^ — 
incessant alternation. This harmonious move- 
ment, as in a dance, this agi'eeing to differ, 
makes the charm of the spectacle to me. One 
bird looks fractional, naked, like a single thread 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 131 

or raveling from the web to which it belongs. 
Alternation! Alternation! Heaven and Hell! 
Here again, in the flight of a bird, its ricochet 
motion is that undulation observed in so many 
materials, as in the mackerel sky. 

If men were to be destroyed, and the books 
they have written to be transmitted to a new 
race of creatures, a new world, what kind of 
record would be found in them of so remarka- 
ble a phenomenon as the rainbow? 

I cannot easily forget the beauty of those 
terrestrial browns in the rain yesterday. The 
withered grass was not of that very pale, hoary 
brown that it is to-day, now that it is dry and 
lifeless; but being perfectly saturated and drip- 
ping with the rain, the whole hillside seemed to 
reflect a certain yellowish light, so that you 
looked roimd for the sun in the midst of the 
storm. . . . The cladonias crowning the knoll 
had richly expanded and erected themselves, 
though seen twenty rods ofif, and the knoll 
appeared swelling and bursting as with yeast. 
The various hues of brown were most beauti- 
fully blended, so that the earth appeared cov- 
ered with the softest and most harmoniously 
spotted and tinted fur coat. ... In short, in 
these early spring rains, the withered herbage 
thus saturated, and reflecting its brightest with- 
ered tint, seems in a certain degree to have re- 



132 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Tired, and svinpatliizes with tlie fresh greenish, 
or yellowish, or brownish lichens in its midst, 
which also seemed to hare withered. It seemed 
to me, and I think it may be the troth, that the 
abundant moisture, bringing ont the highest 
color on the brown surface of the earth, gener- 
ated a certain degree of light, which, when the 
rain held up a little, reminded you of the sun 
shining through a thick mist. • • • The bar- 
renest surfaces are perhaps the most interesting 
in such weather as yesterday, where the most 
terrene colors are seen. The wet earth and 
sand, and especiaUy subsoil, are very inyigorat- 
ing sights. 

It is remarkable that the spots where I find 
most arrowheads, etc., being light, dry soil (as 
the Grreat Fields, Clam-shell Hill, etc.), are 
among the first to be bare of snow and free 
from frost. It is very curiously and particu- 
larly true, for the only parts of the northeast 
section of the Great Fields which are so dry 
that I do not slump there are those, small in 
area, where perfectly bare patches of sand 
occur, and there, singularly enough, the arrow- 
heads are particularly common. Indeed, in 
some cases, I find them only on such bare spots, 
a rod or two in extent, where a single wigwam 
might have stood, and not half a dozen rods off 
in any direction. Yet the difference of level 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 188 

may not be more than a foot, if there is any. 
It is as if the Indians had selected precisely the 
driest spots on the whole plain with a view to 
their advantage at this season. If you were 
going to pitch a tent to-night on the Great 
Fields, you would inevitably pitch on one of 
those spots, or else lie down in water or mud, 
or on ice. It is as if they had chosen the site 
of their wigwams at this very season of the 
year. 

March 14, 1842. It is not easy to find one 
brave enough to play the game of love quite 
alone with you, but they must get some third 
person or world to countenance them. They 
thrust others between. Love is so delicate and 
fastidious that I see not how it can ever begin. 
Do you expect me to love with you unless you 
make my love secondary to nothing else? Your 
words come tainted if the thought of the world 
darts between thee and the thought of me. 
You are not venturous enough for love. It 
goes alone unscared through wildernesses. As 
soon as I see people loving what they see 
merely, and not their own high hopes that they 
form of others, I pity them, and do not want 
their love. Did I ask thee to love me who hate 
myself? No! Love that which I love, and I 
will love thee that loves it. 

The love is faint-hearted and short-lived that 



134 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

is contented with the past history of its object. 
It does not prepare the soil to bear new crops 
lustier than the old. 

I would I had leisure for these things, sighs 
the world. When I have done my quilting 
and baking, then I will not be backward. 

Love never stands still, nor does its object. 
It is the revolving sun and the swelling bud. 

If I know what I love, it is because I remem- 
ber it. 

Life is grand, and so are its environments of 
Past and Future. Would the face of nature be 
so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were 
not equally so? 

What am I good for now, who am still 
searching after high things, but to hear and 
tell the news, to bring wood and water, and 
count how many eggs the hens lay? In the 
mean while I expect my life to begin. I will 
not aspire longer. I will see what it is I would 
be after. I will be unanimous. 

March 14, 1854. Great concert of song- 
sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp 
Brook by river. Hardly hear a distinct strain. 
Couples chasing each other, and some tree-spar- 
rows with them. . . . 

p. M. To Great Meadows. Counted over 
forty robins with my glass in the meadow north 
of Sleepy Hollow, on the grass and on the snow. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 135 

A large company of fox-colored sparrows in 
Heywood's maple swamp close by. I heard 
their loud, sweet, canary-like whistle thirty or 
forty rods off, sounding richer than anything 
else yet ; some on the bushes, singing twee twee 
twa twa twa ter tweer tweer twa. This is the 
scheme of it only, there being no dental grit. 
They were shy, flitting before me, and I heard 
a slight susurrus where many were busily 
scratching amid the leaves in the swamp, with- 
out seeing them, and also saw many indis- 
tinctly. Wilson never heard but one sing, 
their common note, where he heard them, being 
a cheep. 

From within the house at 6J P. M. I hear the 
loud honking of geese, throw up the window, 
and see a large flock in disordered harrow fly- 
ing more directly north, or even northwest, than 
usual. Kaw, thick, misty weather. 

March 14, 1855. I observe the tracks of 
sparrows leading to every little sprig of blue 
curls amid the other weeds, which, with its 
seemingly empty pitchers, rises above the snow. 
There seems, however, to be a little seed left in 
them. This, then, is reason enough why these 
withered stems still stand, that they may raise 
these granaries above the snow for the use of 
the snowbirds. 

March 14, 1858. p. m. I see a Fringilla 



136 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

hiemalis^ the first bird, perchance, unless one 
hawk, which is an evidence of spring, though 
they lingered with us the past unusual winter 
till the 19th of January. They are now get- 
ting back earlier than our permanent summer 
residents. It flits past with a rattling or grat- 
ing chip^ showing its two white tail feathers. 

March 14, 1860. No sooner has the ice of 
Walden melted than the wind begins to play in 
dark ripples over the face of the virgin water. 
It is affecting to see Nature so tender, however 
old, and wearing none of the wrinkles of age. 
Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect 
water as if it had been melted a million years. 
To see that which was lately so hard and im- 
movable now so soft and impressible. What if 
our moods could dissolve thus completely? It 
is like a flush of life on a cheek that was dead. 
It seems as if it must rejoice in its own newly 
acquired fluidity, as it affects the beholder with 
joy. Often the March winds have no chance to 
ripple its face at all. 

March 15, 1841. When I have access to a 
man's barrel of sermons, which were written 
from week to week as his life lapsed, though I 
now know him to live cheerfully and bravely 
enough, still I cannot conceive what interval 
there was for laughter and smiles in the midst 
of so much sadness. Almost in proportion to 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 137 

the sincerity and earnestness of the life wiU be 
the sadness of the record. When I reflect that 
twice a week for so many years he pondered and 
preached such a sermon, I think he must have 
been a splenetic and melancholy man, and won- 
der if his food digested weD. It seems as if 
the fruit of virtue was never a careless happi- 
ness. A great cheerfulness have all great wits 
possessed, almost a profane levity to such as 
understood them not, but their religion had the 
broader basis in proportion as it was less prom- 
inent. The religion I love is very laic. The 
clergy are as diseased and as much possessed 
with a devil as the reformers. They make 
their topic as ojBPensive as the politician; for 
our religion is as unpublic and incommunicable 
as our poetical vein, and to be approached with 
as much love and tenderness. 

March 15, 1842. . . . The poor have come 
out to employ themselves in the sunshine, the 
old and feeble to scent the air once more. I 
hear the bluebird, the song-sparrow, and the 
robin, and the note of the lark leaks up through 
the meadows, as if its bill had been thawed by 
the warm sun. As I am going to the woods I 
think to take some small book in my pocket, 
whose author has been there already, wnose 
pages will be as good as my thoughts, and will 
eke them out or show me human life still gleam- 



138 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

ing in the horizon when the woods have shut 
out the town. But I can find none. None 
will sail as far forward into the bay of nature 
as my thought. They stay at home. I would 
go home. When I get to the wood their thin 
leaves rustle in my fingers. They are bare 
and obvious, and there is no halo or haze about 
them. Nature lies fair and far behind them 
aU. 

Cold Spring. I hear nothing but a phebe, 
and the wind, and the rattling, of a chaise in 
the wood. For a few years I stay here, not 
knowing, taking my own life by degrees, and 
then I go. I hear a spring bubbling near 
where I drank out of a can in my earliest 
youth. The birds, the squirrels, the alders, 
the pines, they seem serene and in their places. 
I wonder if my life looks as serene to them too. 
Does no creature, then, see, not only with the 
eyes of its own narrow destiny, but with God's? 
When God made man, he reserved some parts 
and some rights to himself. The eye has many 
qualities which belong to God more than man. 
It is his lightning which flashes therein. When 
I look into my companion's eye, I think it is 
God's private mine. It is a noble feature; it 
cannot be degraded. For God can look on all 
things undefiled. 

Fond. Nature is constantly original and 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 139 

inventing new patterns, like a mechanic in his 
shop. When the overhanging pine drops into 
the water, by the action of the sun and of the 
wind rubbing it on the shore, its boughs become 
white and smooth, and assume fantastic forms, 
as if turned by a lathe. All things, indeed, 
are subjected to a rotary motion, either gradual 
and partial, or rapid and complete, from the 
planet and system to the simplest shell-fish and 
pebbles on the beach. As if all beauty resulted 
from an object's turning on its own axis, or 
from the turning of others about it. It estab- 
lishes a new centre in the universe. As all 
curves have reference to their centres or foci, 
so all beauty of character has reference to the 
soul, and is a graceful gesture of* recognition or 
waving of the body toward it. 

The great and solitary heart will love alone, 
without the knowledge of its object. It cannot 
have society in its love. It will expend its love 
as the cloud drops rain upon the fields over 
which it floats. 

The only way to speak the truth is to speak 
lovingly. Only the lover's words are heard. 
The intellect should never speak. It does not 
utter a natural sound. 

How trivial the best actions are. I am led 
about from sunrise to sunset by an ignoble 
routine, and yet can find no better road. I 



140 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

must make a part of the planet. I must obey 
the law of nature. 

March 15, 1862. This afternoon I throw 
off my outside coat. A mild spring day. I 
must hie to the Great Meadows. The air is 
full of bluebirds; the ground almost entirely 
bare. The ^villagers are out in the sun, and 
every man is happy whose work takes him out 
doors. I go by Sleepy HoDow toward the 
Great Fields. I lean over a rail to hear what 
is in the air liquid with the bluebirds' warble. 
My life partakes of infinity. The air is as 
deep as our nature. Is the drawing in of this 
vital air attended with no more glorious results 
than I witness? The air is a velvet cushion 
against which I press my ear. I go forth to 
make new demands on life. I wish to begin 
this sunmier well, to do something in it worthy 
of it and of me, to transcend my daily routine 
and that of my townsmen, to have my immor- 
tality now, in the quality of my daily life, to 
pay the greatest price, the greatest tax, of any 
man in Concord, and enjoy the most!! I will 
give all I am for my nobility. I will pay all 
my days for my success. I pray that the life 
of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in 
my memory. May I dare as I have never done. 
May I persevere as I have never done. May I 
purify myself anew as with fire and water, soul 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 141 

and body. May my melody not be wanting to 
the season. May I gird myself to be a hunter 
of the beautiful, that naught escape me. May 
I attain to a youth never attained. I am eager 
to report the glory of the universe. May I be 
worthy to do it, to have got through with re- 
garding human values so as not to be distracted 
from regarding divine values. It is reasonable 
that a man should be something worthier at the 
end of the year than he was at the beginning. 

Yesterday's rain, in which I was glad to be 
drenched, has advanced the spring, settled the 
ways, and the old foot-path and the brook and 
the plank bridge behind the hill, which have 
been buried so long, are suddenly imcovered, 
as if we had returned to our earth after an 
absence, and took pleasure in finding things so 
nearly in the state in which we left them. We 
go out without overcoats, saunter along the 
street, look at the aments of the willow begin- 
ning to appear, and the swelling buds of the 
maple and the elm. The Great Meadows are 
water instead of ice. I see the ice on the bot- 
tom in white sheets. 

Most men find farming unprofitable. But 
there are some who can get their living any- 
where. If you set them down on a bare rock, 
they will thrive there. The true farmer is to 
those that come after him and take the benefit 



142 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

of his improvements like the lichen which 
plants itself on the bare rock and grows and 
thrives and cracks it, making vegetable mould 
for the garden vegetables which are to grow 
in it. 

March 15, 1854. I am sorry to think that 
you do not get a man's most effective criticism 
until you provoke him. Severe truth is ex- 
pressed with some bitterness. 

March 15, 1855. Mr. Rice tells me that 
when he was getting mud out of the little swamp 
at the foot of Brister's Hill he heard a squeak- 
ing and found that he was digging into the nest 
of what he called a "field mouse," from his de- 
scription probably the meadow mouse. It was 
made of grass, etc., and while he stood over it, 
the mother, not regarding him, came and car- 
ried off the young, one by one, in her mouth, 
being gone some time in each case before she 
returned, and finally she took the nest itself. 

March 15, 1857. p. m. To Hubbard's 
Close and Walden. I see in the ditches in 
Hubbard's Close the fine green tips of the 
spires of grass just rising above the surface of 
the water in one place, as if imwilling to trust 
itself to the frosty air. Favored by the warmth 
of the water and sheltered by the banks of the 
ditch it has advanced thus far. But generally 
I see only the flaccid and frost-bitten tips of 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 143 

grass wbich apparently started during that 
warm spell in February. The surface of the 
ditches is spotted with these pale and withered 
frost-bitten bladelets. It was the first green 
blush (nay, it is purple or lake often, and a 
true blush) of spring, of that Indian spring we 
had in February. To be present at the instant 
when the springing grass at the bottoms of 
ditches lifts its spear above the surface and 
bathes in the spring air. Many a first faint 
crop mantling the pools thus early is mown 
down by the frost before the villager suspects 
that vegetation has reawakened. 

The trout darts away in the hazy brook there 
so swiftly in zigzag course that commonly I 
only see the ripple he makes, in proportion, in 
this brook only a foot wide, like that made by 
a steamer in a canal. If I catch a glimpse of 
him before he buries himself in the mud, it is 
only a dark film without distinct outline. By 
his zigzag course he bewilders the eye and 
avoids capture perhaps. 

March 15, 1860. 2 p. m. To Lee's Clifif. 
... A hen-hawk sails away from the wood 
southward. I get a very fair sight of it sailing 
overhead. What a perfectly regular and neat 
outline it presents ! an easily recognized figure 
anywhere. Yet I never see it represented in 
books. The exact correspondence of the marks 



144 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

on one side to those on the other, as of the 
black or dark tip on one wing to that of the 
other, and the dark line midway the wing. I 
do not believe that one can get as correct an 
idea of the form and color of the under sides of 
a hen-hawk's wings by spreading those of a 
dried specimen in his study as by looking up at 
a free and living hawk soaring above him in 
the fields. The penalty for obtaining a petty 
knowledge thus dishonestly is that it is less in- 
teresting to men generally as it is less signifi- 
cant. Some, seeing and admiring the neat 
figure of the hawk saUing two or three hundred 
feet above their heads, wish to get nearer and 
hold it in their hands, perchance, not realizing 
that they can see it best at a distance, bet- 
ter now, perhaps, than ever they will again. 
What is an eagle in captivity I screaming in a 
court-yard! I am not the wiser respecting 
eagles for having seen one there. I do not 
wish to know the length of its entrails. 

How neat and all compact the hawk! Its 
wings and body are all one piece, the wings 
apparently the greater part, while its body is 
a mere fullness, a protuberance between its 
wings, an inconspicuous pouch hung there. It 
suggests no insatiable maw, no corpulence, but 
looks like a large moth, with little body in pro- 
portion to its wings, its body naturally more 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 145 

etherealized as it soars higher. These hawks, 
as usual, began to be common about the first of 
March, showing that they were returning from 
their winter quarters. 

Am surprised to hear from the pool behind 
Lee's Cliff the croaking of the wood-frog. It 
is all alive with them, and I see them spread out 
on the surface. Their note is somewhat in har- 
mony with the rustling of the now drier leaves. 
It is more like the note of the classical frog 
as described by Aristophanes, etc. How sud- 
denly they awake. Yesterday, as it were, 
asleep and dormant; to-day, as lively as ever 
they are. The awakening of the leafy wood- 
land pools.. They must awake in good condi- 
tion. As Walden opens eight days earlier 
than I have known it, so this frog croaks about 
as much earlier. . . . It is remarkable how lit- 
tle certain knowledge even old weather-wise 
men have of the comparative earliness of the 
year. They wiD speak of the passing spring as 
earlier or later than they ever knew, when per- 
chance the third spring before, it was equally 
early or late, as I have known. 

March 16, 1840. The cabins of the settlers 
are the points whence radiate these rays of 
green and yellow and russet over the landscape. 
Out of these go the axes and spades with which 
the landscape is painted. How much is the 



146 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Indian summer and the budding of spring re- 
lated to the cottage. Have not the flight of 
the crow and the gyrations of the hawk a refer- 
ence to that roof? 

The ducks alight at this season on the wind- 
ward side of the river in the smooth water, and 
swim about by twos and threes, pluming them- 
selves and diving to peck at the root of the lily, 
and the cranberries which the frost has not 
loosened. It is impossible to approach them 
within gunshot when they are accompanied by 
the gull, which rises sooner and makes them 
restless. They fly to windward first in order to 
get under weigh, and are more easily reached 
by the shot if approached on that side. When 
preparing to fly they swim about with their 
heads erect, and then, gliding along a few feet 
with their bodies just touching the surface, rise 
heavily with much splashing, and fly low at 
first, if not suddenly aroused, but otherwise rise 
directly to survey the danger. The cunning 
sportsman is not in haste to desert his position, 
but waits to ascertain if, having got themselves 
into flying trim, they will not return over the 
ground in their course to a new resting-place. 

March 16, 1842. Raleigh's maxims are not 
true and impartial, but yet are expressed with 
a certain magnanimity which was natural to the 
man, as if this selfish policy could easily afford 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 147 

to give place in him to a more human and gen- 
erous one. He gives such advice that we have 
more faith in his conduct than his principles. 
He seems to have carried the courtier's life to 
the highest pitch of magnanimity and grace it 
was capable of. He is liberal and gracious as 
a prince, that is, within bounds ; brave, chival- 
rous, heroic, as the knight in armor, and not as 
a defenseless man. His was not the heroism of 
Luther, but of Bayard. There was more of 
grace than of truth in it. He had more taste 
than character. There may be something petty 
in a refined taste; it easily degenerates into 
effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest 
use. It is not content with simple good and 
bad, and so is fastidious and curious, or nice 
only. . . . That is very true which Raleigh 
says about the equal necessity of war and law, 
that "the necessity of war which among human 
actions is most lawless hath some kind of affin- 
ity and near resemblance with the necessity of 
law," for both equally rest on force as their 
basis, and war is only the resource of law, 
either on a smaller or larger. scale, its authority 
asserted. In war, in some sense, lies the very 
genius of law. It is law creative and active, it 
is the first principle of law. What is human 
warfare but just this, an effort to make the laws 
of God and nature take sides with one party? 



148 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Men make an arbitrary code, and, because it is 
not right, they try to make it prevail by might. 
The moral law does not want any champion. 
Its assertors do not go to war. It was never 
infringed with impunity. It is inconsistent to 
deny war and maintain law, for if there were 
no need of war there would be no need of law. 

March 16, 1852. Before sunrise. With 
what infinite and unwearied expectation and 
proclamation the cocks usher in every dawn, as 
if there had never been one before, and the 
dogs bark still, and the thallus of lichens 
springs, so tenacious of life is nature. 

Spent the day in Cambridge Library. . . . 
What a wilderness of books it is. Looking 
over books on Canada written within the last 
three hundred years, I could see how one had 
been built on another, each author consulting 
and referring to his predecessors. You could 
read most of them without changing your posi- 
tion on the steps. It is necessary to find out 
exactly what books to read on a given subject. 
Though there may be a thousand books written 
upon it, it is only necessary to read three or 
four. They will contain all that is essential, 
and a few pages will show which they are. 
Books which are books are all that you want, 
and there are but half a dozen in any thousand. 
I saw that while we are clearing the forest in 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 149 

our westward progress, we are accumulating a 
forest of books in our rear, as wild and unex- 
plored as any of nature's primitive wildernesses. 
The volumes of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and 
seventeenth centuries which lie so near on the 
shelf are rarely opened, are effectually forgot- 
ten, and not implied by our literature and news- 
papers. When I looked into one of them, it 
affected me like looking into an inaccessible 
swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where 
the monarchs of the forest covered with mosses 
and stretched along the ground were making 
haste to become peat. Those old books sug- 
gested a certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if 
they were making a humus for new literatures 
to spring in. I heard the bellowing of bull- 
frogs and the htun of mosquitoes reverberating 
through the thick embossed covers when I had 
closed the book. Decayed literature makes the 
richest of all soils. 

March 16, 1854. a. m. Another fine morn- 
ing. Willows and alders along water courses 
all alive these mornings, and ringing with the 
trills and jingles and warbles of birds, even as 
the waters have lately broken loose and tinkle 
below, — song-sparrows, blackbirds, not to men- 
tion robins, etc., etc. The song-sparrows are 
very abundant, peopling each bush, willow, or 
alder for a quarter of a mile, and pursuing each 



150 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

other as if now selecting their mates. It is 
their song which especially fills the air, made 
an incessant and indistinguishable trill and jin- 
gle by their numbers. I see ducks afar sailing 
on the meadow, leaving a long furrow in the 
water behind them. Watch them at leisure 
without scaring them, with my glass; observe 
their free and undisturbed motions. Some dark 
brown, partly on water, alternately dipping 
with their tails up, partly on land. Others 
with bright white breasts, etc., and black heads, 
of about the same size or larger. (Later date. 
Probably both sheldrakes.) They dive and are 
gone some time, and come up a rod off. At 
first I saw but one, then, a minute after, three. 
The first phebe, near the water, is heard. 

March 16, 1855. p. m. To Conantum End. 
At the woodchuck's hole, just beyond the cock- 
spur thorn, I see several diverging and con- 
verging tracks of, undoubtedly, a woodchuck or 
several, which must have come out at least as 
early as the 13th. The track is about one and 
three quarters inches wide by two long, the five 
toes very distinct and much spread, and, includ- 
ing the scrape of the snow before the foot came 
to its bearing, is somewhat handlike. It is 
simple and alternate, thus, *#*#** 
commonly, but sometimes much like a rabbit's, 
and again, like a mink's, somewhat thus \ \ 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 151 

They had come out and run about directly from 
hole to hole, six in all, within a dozen rods or 
more. This appeared to have been all their 
traveling, as if they had run round a-visiting 
and waked each other up the first thing. At 
first they soiled the snow with their sandy feet. 
At one place they had been clearing out to-day 
the throats of two holes within a rod of each 
other, scattering the mud-like sand, made wet 
by the melting snow, over the pure snow 
around. I saw where, between these holes, 
they had sat on a horizontal limb of a shrub 
oak (which they had tried their teeth on) about 
a foot from the ground, plainly to warm and 
dry themselves in the sun, having muddied it 
all over. I also saw where one had sunned 
himseK on a stone at the foot of a small pitch 
pine, and tried his teeth on a dead limb of the 
pine. They could not go in or out of these 
sandy burrows without being completely cov- 
ered with sandy mud. The path over the snow 
between these holes was quite covered with it. 
They have but four toes on the fore feet with 
the rudiment of a thumb. The woodchuck's 
first journey then appears to be to some neigh- 
boring hole which he remembers a dozen or fif- 
teen rods off, and, perchance, he goes as 
straight or unerringly to it as if he had not 
been asleep aU winter. Apparently, after a 



152 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Kttle gossiping there, lis first work is to clear 
out the entrance to his burrow, ejecting the 
leaves and sand which have there collected. 
None have traveled beyond these holes, except 
that one track leads into the swamp. But 
here are the tracks of foxes bound on longer 
journeys. They are generally ten or twelve 
inches apart lengthwise, by three to five wide, 

but are irregular, 
now two at the usual distance, then two close 
together or three or four inches apart only. 
The foot is very shapely, much like a dog's. 

March 16, 1858. ... A still, foggy, and 
rather warm day. I heard this morning . . . 
that peculiar drawling note of a hen who has 
this hennish way of expressing her content at 
the sight of bare ground and mild weather. 
The crowing of cocks and cawing of crows tell 
the same story. . . . 

How conversant the Indian, who lived out of 
doors, must have been with mouse-ear leaves, 
pine needles, mosses, and lichens which form 
the crust of the earth. No doubt he had 
names accordingly for many things for which 
we have no popular names. 

I walk in muddy fields, hearing the tinkle of 
the new-bom rills. Where the melted snow 
has made a swift rill in the rut of a cart-path, 
flowing over an icy bottom, and between icy 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 153 

banks, I see, just below a little fall an inch 
high, a circular mass of foam or white bubbles 
nearly two inches in diameter, slowly revolving, 
but never moving off. The swift stream at the 
fall appears to strike one side, as it might the 
side of a water wheel, and so cause it to re- 
volve; but in the angle between this and the 
fall half an inch distant, is another circle of 
bubbles, revolving very rapidly in the opposite 
direction. The laws, perchance, by which the 
world was made, and according to which the 
systems revolve, are seen in full operation in a 
rill of melted snow. 

March 16, 1859. p. M. Launch my boat 
and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine, clear 
weather, and a strong northwest wind. What 
a change since yesterday! Last night I came 
home through as incessant heavy rain as I have 
been out in for many years, through the muddi- 
est and wettest of streets, still partly covered 
with ice, and the rain-water stood over shoes in 
many places on the sidewalks. I heard of sev- 
eral who went astray in this water, and had 
adventures in the dark. You require Lidia- 
rubber boots then. But to-day I see the chil- 
dren playing at hop-scotch on those very side- 
walks, with a bed marked in the dry sand. So 
rapid are the changes of weather^th us and 
SO porous our soil. . • • 



154 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

A new phase of the spring is presented, a 
new season has come. We no longer see drip- 
ping, saturated russet and brown banks through 
rain, hearing at intervals the alarm notes of 
early robins, banks which reflect a yellowish 
light, but we see the bare and now pale-brown 
and dry russet hills. The earth has cast off 
her white coat and come forth in her clean- 
washed, sober, russet, early spring dress. As 
we look over the lively tossing blue waves for 
a mile or more eastward and westward, our eyes 
fall on these shining russet hills. Ball's Hill 
appears in the strong light, at the verge of this 
undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly- 
created island of the spring, just sprung up 
from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters. 
The fawn-colored oak leaves, with a few pines 
intermixed, thickly covering the hill, look not 
like a withered vegetation, but an ethereal kind 
just expanded and peculiarly adapted to the 
season and the sky. 

Look toward the sun, the water is yellow, as 
water in which the earth had just washed itself 
clean of its winter impurities ; look from the sun 
and it is a beautiful dark blue; but in each 
direction the crests of the waves are white, and 
you cannot sail or row over this watery wilder- 
ness without sharing the excitement of this ele- 
ment. Our sail draws so strongly that we cut 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 156 

through the great waves without feeling them. 
. . . We meet one great gull beating up the 
course of the river against the wind at Flint's 
Bridge. It is a very leisurely sort of limping 
flight, the bird tacking its way along like a sail- 
ing vessel. Yet the slow security with which it 
advances suggests a leisurely contemplativeness, 
as if it were working out some problem quite at 
its leisure. As often as its very narrow, long, 
and curved wings are lifted up against the light, 
I see a very narrow, distinct light edging to the 
wing where it is thin. Its black tipped wings. 
Afterwards from Ball's Hill I see two more 
circling about, looking for food over the ice 
and water. 

March 16, 1860. Saw a flock of sheldrakes 
a hundred rods off on the Great Meadows, 
mostly males, with a few females, all intent on 
fishing. They were coasting along a spit of 
bare ground that showed itself in the middle of 
the meadow, sometimes the whole twelve appar- 
ently in a straight line, at nearly equal distances 
apart, each with its head under water, rapidly 
coasting along back and forth, and ever and 
anon one having caught something would be 
pursued by the others. It is remarkable that 
they find their finny prey in the middle of the 
meadow now, and even on the very inmost side, 
as I afterward saw, though the water is quite 



156 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

low. Of course, as soon as they are seen on 
the meadows there are fishes there to be caught. 
I never see them fish thus in the channel. Per- 
haps the fishes lie up there for warmth already. 

I also see two guUs nearly a mile off. One 
stands still and erect for three quarters of an 
hour, or tiU disturbed, on a little bit of floated 
meadow crust which rises above the water, just 
room for it to stand on, with its great white 
breast toward the wind. Then another comes 
flying past it, and alights on a similar perch, 
but which does not rise quite to the surface, so 
that it stands in the water. Thus they will 
stand for an hour, at least. They are not of 
handsome form, but look like great wooden 
images of birds, bluish slate, and white. But 
when they fly they are quite another creature. 

March 17, 1842. I have been making pen- 
cils all day, and then at evening walked to see 
an old schoolmate who is going to help make 
the Welland canal navigable for ships round 
Niagara. He cannot see any such motives and 
modes of living as I, professes not to look be- 
yond the securing of certain "creature com- 
forts." And so we go silently different ways 
with all serenity, I, in the still moonlight 
through the village this fair evening to write 
these thoughts in my journal, and he, forsooth, 
to mature his schemes to ends as good, may be, 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 157 

but different. So are we two made, while the 
same stars shine quietly over us. If I or he be 
wrong, nature yet consents placidly. She bites 
her lip and smiles to see how her children will 
agree. So does the Welland canal get built, 
and other conveniences, while I live. Well 
and good, I must confess. Fast-sailing ships 
are hence not detained. 

What means this changing sky, that now I 
freeze and contract and go within myseK to 
warm me, and now I say it is a south wind and 
go all soft and warm along the way? I some- 
times wonder if I do not breathe the south 
wind- 

March 17, 1852. I catch myself philoso- 
phizing most abstractly when first returning to 
consciousness in the nisrht or momins:. I make 
the truest observation! and distinctions tixen, 
when the will is yet wholly asleep, and the 
mind works like a machine without friction. I 
am conscious of having in my sleep transcended 
the limits of the individual, and made observa- 
tions and carried on conversations which in my 
waking hours I can neither recall nor appreci- 
ate. As if in sleep our individual fell into the 
infinite mind, and at the moment of awakening 
we found ourselves on the confines of the latter. 
On awakening we resume our enterprises, take 
up our bodies, and become limited mind again. 



158 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

We meet and converse with those bodies which 
we have previously animated. There is a mo- 
ment in the dawn, when the darkness of the 
night is dissipated and before the exhalations 
of the day begin to rise, when we see things 
more truly than at any other time. The light 
is more trustworthy, since our senses are purer 
and the atmosphere is less gross.' By afternoon 
all objects are seen in mirage. . . . 

To-day the fox-colored sparrow is on its way 
to Hudson's Bay. 

March 17, 1854. . . . The grass is slightly 
greened on south bank-sides, on the south side 
of the house. The first tinge of green appears 
to be due to moisture more than direct heat. 
It is not on bare, dry banks, but in hoUows 
where the snow melts last, that it is most con- 
spicuous. 

March 17, 1855. See now along the edge 
of the river, the ice being gone, many fresh 
heaps of clam-shells which were opened by the 
musquash when the water was higher, about 
some tree where the ground rises. And in 
very many places you see where they formed 
new burrows into the bank, the sand being 
pushed out into the stream about the entrance, 
which is still below water, and you feel the 
ground undermined as you walk. 

March 17, 1857. These days, beginning 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 159 

with the 14th, more spring-like. I hear the 
note of the woodpecker from the ehns, that 
early note. Launch my boat. No mortal is 
alert enough to be present at the first dawn of 
the spring, but he will presently discover some 
evidence that vegetation had awaked some days 
at least before. Early as I have looked this 
year, perhaps the first unquestionable growth 
of an indigenous plant detected was the fine tips 
of grass blades which the frost had killed, float- 
ing pale and flaccid, though still attached to 
their stems, spotting the pools like a slight fall 
or flurry of dull-colored snow-flakes. After a 
few mild and sunny days, even in February, the 
grass in still, muddy pools and ditches, sheltered 
by the surrounding banks which reflect the heat 
upon it, ventures to lift the points of its green 
phalanx into the mild and flattering atmosphere, 
and advances rapidly from the saffron even to 
the rosy tints of morning. But the following 
night comes the frost which with rude and ruth- 
less hand sweeps the surface of the pool, and 
the advancing morning pales into the dim light 
of earliest dawn. I thus detect the first ap- 
proach of spring by finding here and there its 
scouts and vanguard which have been slain by 
the rearguard of retreating winter. 

March 17, 1858. Hear the first bluebird. 

p. M. To the Hill. A remarkably warm and 



160 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

pleasant day with a south or southwest wind. 
The air is full of bluebirds, I hear them far 
and near on all sides of the hill, warbling in 
the tree-tops, though I do not distinctly see 
them. I stand by the wall at the east base of 
the hiU, looking into the alder meadow lately 
cut off. I am peculiarly attracted by its red- 
brown maze, seen in this bright sun and mild 
southwest wind. It has expression in it as a 
familiar freckled face. Methinks it is about 
waking up, though it still slumbers. I see the 
still, smooth pools of water in its midst almost 
free from ice, and seem to hear the sound of 
the water soaking into it, as it were, its 
voice. . . . 

Even the shade is agreeable to-day. You 
hear the buzzing of a fly from time to time, 
and see the black speck zigzag by. 

Ah, there is the note of the first flicker, — 
a prolonged, monotonous wick-wick'wick'wick- 
wick'wick^ etc., or, if you please, quick-quick- 
quicky heard far over and through the dry 
leaves. But how that single sound peoples and 
enriches all the woods and fields I They are no 
longer the same woods and fields that they were. 
This note really quickens what was dead. It 
seems to put life into the withered grass and 
leaves and bare twigs, and henceforth the days 
shall not be as they have been. It is as when 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 161 

a family, your neighbors, return to an empty 
house after a long absence, and you hear the 
cheerful hum of voices and the laughter of chil- 
dren, and see the smoke from the kitchen fire. 
The doors are thrown open, and children go 
screaming through the hall. So the flicker 
dashes through the aisles of the grove, throws 
up a window here, and cackles out of it, and 
then there, airing the house. He makes his 
voice ring upstairs and downstairs, and so, as 
it were, fits it for his habitation and ours, and 
takes possession. It is as good as a house- 
warming to all nature. Now I hear and see 
him louder and nearer on the top of the long- 
armed white oak, sitting very upright, as is 
their wont, as it were calling to some of his 
kind that may also have arrived. 

Sitting under the handsome scarlet oak be- 
yond the hill, I hear a faint note far in the 
wood which reminds me of the robin ; again I 
hear it; it is he, an occasional peep. These 
notes of the earliest birds seem to invite forth 
vegetation. . . . 

Now I hear, when passing the south side of 
the hill, or first when threading the maple 
swamp far west of it, the tchuck tchucJc of a 
blackbird, and after, a distinct conqueree. So 
it is a red-wing. Thus these four species of 
birds all come in one day, no doubt, to almost 
all parts of the town. 



162 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 17, 1859. 6J a. m. River rises still 
higher. . . . A great many musquash have 
been killed within a week. One says a cart- 
load have been killed in Assabet. Perhaps a 
dozen gunners have been out in this town every 
day. They get a shilling apiece for their skins. 
One man getting musquash and one mink 
earned five or six dollars the other day. I 
hear their gims early and late, long before sun- 
rise and after sunset, for these are the best 
times. 

p. M. To Flint's Bridge by water. The 
water is very high and as smooth as it ever is. 
It is very warm. I wear but one coat. On 
the water, the town and the land it is built on 
rise but little above the flood. This bright, 
smooth, and level surface seems here the pre- 
vailing element, as if the distant town were an 
island. I realize how water predominates on 
the surface of the globe. . . . How different 
to-day from yesterday. Yesterday was a cool, 
bright day, the earth just washed bare by the 
rain, and a strong northwest wind raised re- 
spectable billows on our vernal seas and im- 
parted remarkable life and spirit to the scene. 
To-day it is perfectly still and warm, not a 
ripple disturbs the surface of these lakes, but 
every insect, every small black beetle strug- 
gling on it, is betrayed. Seen through this air, 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 163 

though many might not notice the difference, 
the russet surface of the earth does not shine, 
is not bright. I see no shining russet islands 
with dry but flushing oak leaves. The air is 
comparatively dead when I attend to it, and 
it is as if there were the veil of a fine mist 
over all objects, dulling their edges. Yet this 
would be called a clear day. These aerial dif- 
ferences in the days are not commonly appre- 
ciated, though they affect our spirits. 

When I am opposite the end of the willow 
row, seeing the osiers of perhaps two years old, 
all in a mass, they are seen to be very dis- 
tinctly yellowish beneath and scarlet above. 
They are fifty rods off. Here is the same 
chemistry that colors the leaf or fruit, coloring 
the bark. It is generally, probably always, 
the upper part of the twig, the more recent 
growth, that is the higher colored, and more 
flower or fruit like. So leaves are more ethe- 
real the higher up and farther from the root. 
In the bark of the twigs, indeed, is the more 
permanent flower or fruit. The flower falls in 
spring or summer, the fruit and leaves fall or 
wither in autumn, but the blushing twigs retain 
their color throughout the winter, and appear 
more brilliant than ever the succeeding spring. 
They are winter fruit. It adds greatly to the 
pleasure of late November, of winter, or of 



164 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

early spring walks to look into these mazes of 
. twigs of different colors. 

As I float by the Eoek, I hear a rustling 
amid the oak leaves above that new water line, 
and there being no wind I know it to be a 
striped squirrel, and soon see its long unseen 
striped sides flirting about the instep of an oak. 
Its lateral stripes, alternate black and yellow- 
ish, are a type which I have not seen for a long 
time, = a punctuation mark to indicate that a 
new paragraph commences in the revolution of 
the seasons. 

March 17, 1860. p. M. To Walden and 
Goose Pond. I see a large flock of sheldrakes, 
which have probably risen from the pond, go 
over my head in the woods, a dozen large and 
compact birds flying with great force and rapid- 
ity, spying out the land, eying every traveler. 
Now you hear the whistling of their wings, and 
in a moment they are lost in the horizon. 
What health and vigor they suggest! The life 
of man seems slow and puny in comparison, 
reptilian. 

How handsome a flock of red-wings, ever 
changing its oval form as it advances, from the 
rear birds pursuing the others. 

March 18, 1842. Whatever book or sen- 
tence will bear to be read twice, we may be 
sure was thought twice. I say this thinking 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 165 

of Carljk, who writes pictures or first impres- 
sions merely, which consequently will only bear 
a first reading. As if any transient, any new 
mood of the best man deserved to detain the 
world long. I should call his writing essen- 
tially dramatic, excellent acting, entertaining 
especially to those who see rather than those 
who hear, not to be repeated, more than a joke. 
If he did not think who made the joke, how 
shall he think who hears it. He never consults 
the oracle, but thinks to utter oracles himself. 
There is nothing in his book for which he is 
not and does not feel responsible. He does not 
retire behind the truth he utters, but stands in 
the foreground. I wish he would just think, 
and tell me what he thinks, appear to me in the 
attitude of a man with his ear inclined, who 
comes as silently and meekly as the morning 
star, which is unconscious of the dawn it her- 
alds; leading the way up the steep as though 
alone and unobserved in its observing, without 
looking behind. 

March 18, 1852. That is a pretty good story 
told of a London citizen just retired to country 
life on a fortune, who wishing, among other 
novel rustic experiments, to establish a number 
of bee conmiunities, would not listen to the 
advice of his under-steward, but asking fiercely 
^^how he could be so thoughtless as to recom- 



166 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

mend a purchase of what might so easily be 
procured on the Downs?" ordered him to hire 
ten women to go in quest of bees the next 
morning, and to prepare hives for the reception 
of the captives. Early the neict day the detach- 
ment started for the Downs, each furnished 
with a tin canister to contain the spoil; and 
after running about for hours, stimning the 
bees with blows from their straw bonnets, and 
encountering stings without number, secured 
about thirty prisoners who were safely lodged 
in a hive. But, as has been the fate of many 
arduous campaigns, little advantage accrued 
from all this fatigue and danger. Next morn- 
ing the squire sallied forth to visit his new 
colony. As he approached, a loud himmiing 
assured him that they were hard at work, when, 
to his infinite disappointment, it was found that 
the bees had made their escape through a small 
hole in the hive, leaving behind them only an 
unfortunate humble-bee, whose bulk prevented 
his squeezing himself through the aperture, and 
whose loud complaints had been mistaken for 
the busy hum of industry. You must patiently 
study the method of nature, and take advice of 
the under-steward in the establishment of all 
communities, both insect and human. Proba- 
bly the bees could not make industry attractive 
under the circumstances described above. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 167 

A wise man will not go out of his way for 
information. He might as well go out of na- 
ture, or commit suicide. 

March 18, 1853. ... The bluebird and 
song-sparrow sing immediately on their arrival, 
and hence deserve to enjoy some preeminence. 
They give expression to the joy which the sea- 
son in&pires, but the robin and blackbird only 
peep and tchuck at first, commonly, and the 
lark is silent and flitting. The bluebird at 
once fills the air with his sweet warbling, and 
the song-sparrow from the top of a rail pours 
forth his most joyous strain. Both express 
their delight at the weather, which permits 
them to return to their favorite haunts. They 
are the more welcome to man for it. 

The sun is now declining with a warm and 
bright light on all things, a light which answers 
to the late afterglow of the year, when, in the 
fall, wrapping his cloak about him, the traveler 
goes home at night to prepare for winter. This 
is the foreglow of the year, when the walker 
goes home at eve to dream of summer. 

March 18, 1855. Round by Hollowell Place 
ma Clam-shell. I see with my glass as I go 
over the railroad bridge, sweeping the river, a 
great gull standing far away on the top of a 
muskrat cabin, which rises just above the 
water. When I get round within sixiy rods of 



168 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

him, ten minutes later, he still stands on the 
same spot, constantly turning his head to every 
side, looking out for food. Like a wooden 
image of a bird he stands there, heavy to look 
at, head, breast, beneath, and rump pure 
white, slate-colored wings tipped with black, 
and extending beyond the tail, the herring gull. 
I can see down to his webbed feet. But now I 
advaoice and he rises easily, a^d goes off north- 
eastward over the river with a leisurely flight. 

At Clam-shell Hill I sweep the river again, 
and see standing midleg deep on the meadow 
where the water is very shallow, with deeper 
around, another of these wooden images, which 
is harder to scare. I do not fairly distinguish 
black tips to its wings. It is ten or fifteen 
minutes before I get him to rise, and then he 
goes off in the same leisurely manner, stroking 
the air with his wings, and now making a great 
circle back in his course, so that you cannot tell 
which way he is bound. By standing so long 
motionless in these places they may, perchance, 
accomplish two objects, i. 6., catch passing fish 
(suckers?) like a heron, and escape the attention 
of man. His utmost motions were to plume 
himself once, and turn his head about. If he 
did not move his head he would look like a 
decoy. 

March 18, 1858. 7 a. m. By river. Al- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 169 

most every bush has its song-sparrow this morn- 
ing, and their tinkling strains are heard on all 
sides. You see them just hopping under a bush 
or into some other covert as you go by, turning 
with a jerk this way and that; or they flit away 
just above the ground, which they resemble. 
Theirs is the prettiest strain I have heard yet. 
Melvin is already out in his boat for all day 
with his white hound in the prow, bound up the 
river for musquash, etc., but the river is hardly 
high enough to drive them out. 

p. M. To Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard's 
Bathing Place. How much more habitable a 
few birds make the fields I At the end of the 
winter, when the fields are bare, and there is 
nothing to relieve the monotony of withered 
vegetation, our life seems reduced to its lowest 
terms. But let a bluebird come and warble 
over them, and what a change! The note of 
the first bluebird in the air answers to the purl- 
ing rill of melted snow beneath. It is evidently 
soft and soothing, and, as surely as the ther- 
mometer, indicates a higher temperature. It 
is the accent of the south wind, its vernacular. 
It is modulated by the south wind. 

The song-sparrow is more sprightly, mingling 
its notes with the rustling of the brush along 
the water sides, but it is at the same time more 
terrene than the bluebird. The first wood- 



170 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

pecker comes screaming into the empty house, 
and throws open doors and windows wide, call- 
ing out each of them to let the neighbors know 
of its return. But heard farther oflF it is very- 
suggestive of ineffable associations, which can- 
not be distinctly recalled, of long-drawn simimer 
hours, and thus it also has the effect of music. 
I was not aware that the capacity to hear the 
woodpecker had slumbered within me so long. 
When the blackbird gets to a conqueree he 
seems to be dreaming of the sprays that are to 
be and on which he will perch. The robin does 
not come singing, but utters a somewhat anx- 
ious or inquisitive peep at first. The song- 
sparrow is inmiediately most at home of those I 
have named. 

Each new year is a surprise to us. We find 
that we had virtually forgotten the note of each 
bird, and when we hear it again, it is remem- 
bered like a dream, reminding us of a previous 
state of existence. How happens it that the 
associations it awakens are always pleasing, 
never saddening, reminiscences of our sanest 
hours. The voice of nature is always encour- 
aging. 

When I get two thirds up the hill, I look 
round, and am for the hundredth time surprised 
by the landscape of the river valley and the 
horizon with its distant blue-scalloped rim. It 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 171 

is a spring landscape, and as impossible a fort- 
night ago as the song of birds. It is a deeper 
and warmer blue than in winter, methinks. 
The snow is off the mountains, which seem 
even to have come again like the birds. The 
undulating river is a bright blue channel be- 
tween sharp-edged shores of ice retained by the 
willows. The wind blows strong but warm 
from west by north (so that I have to hold my 
paper tight while I write this), making the 
copses creak and roar, but the sharp tinkle of 
a song-sparrow is heard through it all. But, 
ah ! the needles of the pine, how they shine, as 
I look down over the Holden wood and west- 
ward! Every third tree is lit with the most 
subdued, but clear, ethereal light, as if it were 
the most delicate frost-work in a winter morn- 
ing, reflecting no heat, but only light. And as 
they rock and wave in the strong wind, even a 
mile off, the light courses up and down them as 
over a field of grain, i. e., they are alternately 
light and dark, like looms above the forest, 
when the shuttle is thrown between the light 
woof and the dark web. At sight of this my 
spirit is like a lit tree. It runs or flashes over 
their parallel boughs as when you play with the 
teeth of a comb. Not only osiers, but pine 
needles, shine brighter, I think, in the spring, 
and arrowheads and railroad rails, etc., etc« 



172 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Anacreon noticed this spring shining. Is it 
not from the higher sun and cleansed air and 
greater animation of nature? There is a 
warmer red on the leaves of the shrub oak and 
on the tail of the hawk circling over them. 

I sit on the cliff and look toward Sudbury. 
I see its meeting-houses and its common, and 
its fields lie but little beyond my ordinary walk. 
How distant in all important senses may be the 
town which yet is within sight. With a glass 
I might, perchance, read the time on its clock. 
How circumscribed are our walks after all! 
With the utmost industry we cannot expect to 
know well an area more than six miles square; 
and yet we pretend to be travelers, to be ac- 
quainted with Siberia and Africa ! 

March 18, 1860. I examine the skunk cab- 
bage now generally and abundantly in bloom 
all along under Clam-shell. It is a flower, as 
it were, without a leaf. All that you see is 
a stout beaked hood just rising above the dead 
brown grass in the springy ground where it 
has felt the heat under some south bank. The 
single enveloping leaf or spathe is all the flower 
that you see commonly, and these are as vari- 
ously colored as tulips, and of singular color, 
from a very dark, almost black mahogany to 
a bright yellow, streaked or freckled with ma- 
hogany. It is a leaf simply folded around the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 173 

flower, with its top like a bird's beak bent 
over it for its further protection, evidently to 
keep off wind and frost, and having a sharp 
angle down its back. These various colors 
are seen close together, and the beaks are bent 
in various directions. All along under that 
bank I heard the hum of honey-bees in the air, 
attracted by this flower. Especially the hum 
of one within a spathe sounds deep and loud. 
They circle about the bud, at first hesitatingly, 
then alight and enter at the open door and 
crawl over the spadix, and reappear laden with 
the yellow pollen. What a remarkable instinct 
it is that leads them to this flower. This bee 
is said to have been introduced by the white 
man, but how much it has learned. This is 
almost the only indigenous flower in bloom in 
this town at present, and probably I and my 
companion are the only men who have detected 
it this year. Yet this foreign fly has left its 
home, probably a mile off, and winged its way 
to this warm bank to find it. Six weeks hence 
children will set forth a-Maying, and have in- 
different luck. But the first sunny and warmer 
day in March the honey-bee comes forth, 
stretches its wings, and goes forth in search of 
the earliest flower. 

March 18, 1861. When I pass by a twig of 
willow, though of the slenderest kind, rising 



1T4 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

above the sedge in some dry hollow, early in 
December or midwinter, above the snow, my 
spirits rise, as if it were an oasis in the desert. 
The very name, sallow (salix^ from the Celtic 
sal'lis^ near water), suggests that there is some 
natural sap or blood flowing there. It is a 
divining rod that has not failed, but stands 
with its root in the fountain. The fertile wil- 
low catkins are those green caterpillar-like 
ones, commonly an inch or more in length, 
which develop themselves rapidly after the 
sterile yellow ones, which we had so admired, 
are fallen or eflfete. Arranged around the bare 
twigs, they often form green wands from eight 
to eighteen inches long. A single catkin con- 
sists of from twenty -five to one hundred pods, 
more or less ovate and beaked, each of which is 
closely packed with cotton, in which are numer- 
ous seeds, so small that they are scarcely dis- 
cernible by ordinary eyes. 

" The willow worn by forlorn paramour." 

As if it were the emblem of despairing love! 
It is rather the emblem of triumphant love and 
sympathy with all nature. It may droop, — it 
is so lithe and supple, — but it never weeps. 
The willow of Babylon blooms not the less 
hopefully with us though its other half is not in 
the New England world at all, and never has 
been. It droops not to represent David's tears. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 175 

but rather to snatch the crown from Alexan- 
der's head. (Nor were poplars ever the weep- 
ing sisters of Phaeton, for nothing rejoices 
them more than the sight of the sun's chariot, 
and little reck they who drives it.) No wonder 
its wood was anciently in demand for bucklers, 
for, like the whole tree, it is not only soft and 
pliant, but tough and resilient, as Pliny says, 
not splitting at the first blow, but closing its 
wounds at once, and refusing to transmit its 
hurts. I know of one foreign species which 
introduced itself into Concord as a withe used 
to tie up a bundle of trees. A gardener stuck 
it in the ground, and it lived, and has its de- 
scendants. Herodotus says that the Scythians 
divined by the help of willow rods. I do not 
know any better twigs for this purpose. 

You can't read any genuine history, as that 
of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede, without 
perceiving that our interest depends not on the 
subject, but on the man, or the manner in 
which he treats the subject, and the importance 
he gives it. A feeble writer, and without gen- 
ius, must have what he thinks a great theme^ 
which we are already interested in through the 
accounts of others ; but a genius — a Shake- 
speare, for instance — would make the history 
of his parish more interesting than another's 
history of the world. Wherever men have 



176 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

lived there is a story to be told, and it depends 
chiefly on the story-teller, the historian, whether 
that is interesting or not. 

March 19, 1841. No true and brave person 
will be content to live on such a footing with 
his feUows and himself as the laws of every 
household now require. The house is the very 
haunt and lair of our vice. I am impatient to 
withdraw myself from under its roof as an un- 
clean spot. There is no circulation there. It 
is full of stagnant and mephitic vapors. 

March 19, 1842. When I walk in the fields 
of Concord and meditate on the destiny of this 
prosperous slip of the Saxon family, the unex- 
hausted energies of this new country, I forget 
that this which is now Concord was once Mus- 
ketaquid, and that the American race has had 
its destiny also. Everywhere in the fields, in 
the com and grain land, the earth is strewn 
with the relics of a race which has vanished as 
completely as if trodden in with the earth. Is 
it not good to remember the eternity behind me 
as well as the eternity before? Wherever I go 
I tread in the tracks of the Indian. I pick up 
the bolt which he has but just dropped at my 
feet. And if I consider destiny I am on his 
trail. I scatter his hearthstones with my feet, 
and pick out of the embers of his fire the sim- 
ple but enduring implements of the wigwam 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 177 

and the chase. In planting my com in the 
same furrow which yielded its increase to his 
support so long, I displace some memorial of 
him. I have been walking this afternoon over 
a pleasant field planted with winter rye in a 
region where this strange people once had their 
dwelling-place. Another species of mortal men, 
but little less wild to me than the musquash 
they hunted. Strange spirits, demons, whose 
eye could never meet mine. With another 
nature, and another fate than mine. The 
crows flew over the edge of the woods, and, 
wheeling over my head, seemed to rebuke, as 
dark-winged spirits more akin to the Indian 
than I. Perhaps only the present disguise of 
the Indian. If the new has a meaning, so has 
the old. ... 

A blithe west wind is blowing over all. In 
the fine flowing haze, men at a distance seem 
shadowy and gigantic, as ill-defined and great 
as men should always be. I do not know if 
yonder be a man or a ghost. 

What a consolation are the stars to man, so 
high and out of his reach, as is his own destiny. 
. . . My fate is in some sense linked with 
theirs; and if they are to persevere to a great 
end, shall I die who could conjecture it? It 
surely is some encouragement to know that the 
stars are my fellow-creatures, for I do not sus- 



178 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

pect but they are reserved for a high destiny. 
Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eter- 
nity can solve. 

I see laws which never fail, of whose failure 
I never conceived. Indeed, I cannot detect 
failure anywhere but in my fear. I do not fear 
that right is not right, that good is not good, 
but only the annihilation of the present exist- 
ence. But only that can make me incapable of 
fear. My fears are as good prophets as my 
hopes. 

March 19, 1852. Observed, as I stood with 

C on the brink of the rill on Conantimi, 

where falling a few inches it produced bubbles, 
our images three quarters of an inch long, and 
black as imps, appearing to lean towards each 
other on accoimt of the convexity of the bubbles. 
There was nothing but these two distinct black 
manikins and the branch of the elm over our 
heads to be seen. The bubbles rapidly burst 
and succeeded one another. 

March 19, 1854. Cold and windy. The 
meadow ice bears where the water is shallow. 
. . . Saw in Mill Brook three or four shiners 
(the first), poised over the sand, with a distinct 
longitudinal, light-colored line midway along 
their sides and a darker line below it. This 
is a noteworthy and characteristic lineament, a 
cipher, a hieroglyphic, or type of spring. You 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 179 

look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, 
where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing 
cold from ice and snow not far off, and see in- 
distinctly poised over the sand, on invisible fins, 
the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distin- 
guished from the sand behind it, as if it were 
transparent, or as if the material of which it 
was builded had all been picked up from there, 
chiefly distinguished by the lines I have men- 
tioned. 

March 19, 1856. . . . The snow was con- 
stantly sixteen inches deep at least on a level 
in open land from January 13th to March 13th. 

J/arcA 19, 1858. p.m. To Hill and Grackle 
Swamp. Another pleasant and warm day. 
Painted my boat this p. M. These spring im- 
pressions (as of the apparent waking up of the 
meadow described day before yesterday) are not 
repeated the same year, at least not with the 
same force, for the next day the same phenome- 
non does not surprise us, our appetite has lost 
its edge. The other day the face of the meadow 
wore a peculiar appearance, as if it were begin- 
ning to wake up under the influence of the 
southwest wind and the warm sun, but it cannot 
again this year present precisely that appearance 
to me. I have taken a step forward to a new 
position and must see something else. We 
perceive and are affected by changes too subtle 
to be described. 



180 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

I see little swarms of those fine fuzzy gnats 
in the air. It is their wings which are most 
conspicuous when they are in the sun. Their 
bodies are comparatively small and black, and 
they have two mourning plumes on their fronts. 
Are not these the winter gnat? They keep up 
a circulation in the air like water bugs on the 
water. Sometimes there is a globular swarm 
two feet or more in diameter, suggesting how 
genial and habitable the air has become. They 
people a portion of the otherwise vacant air, 
being apparently for and of the sunshine, in 
which they are most conspicuous. . . . 

By the river I see distinctly red-wings and 
hear their conqueree. They are not associated 
with grackles. They are an age before their 
cousins, have attained to clearness and liquidity; 
they are officers, epauleted. The others are 
rank and file. I distinguish one even by its 
flight, hovering slowly from tree-top to tree-top, 
as if ready to utter its liquid notes. Their 
whistle is very clear and sharp, while that of the 
grackle is ragged and split. 

It is a fine evening, as I stand on the bridge. 
The waters are quite smooth, very little ice to 
be seen. The red-wing and song-sparrow are 
singing, and a flock of tree-sparrows is pleas- 
antly warbling. A new era has come. The red- 
wing's gurgle-ee is heard where smooth waters 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 181 

begin. One or two boys are out trying their 
skiffs, even like the fuzzy gnats in the sun, and 
as often as one turns his boat round on the 
smooth surface, the setting sun is reflected from 
its side. 

I feel reproach when I have spoken with lev- 
ity, when I have made a jest, of my own exist- 
ence. The makers have thus secured serious- 
ness and respect for their work in our very 
organization. The most serious events have 
their ludicrous aspects, such as death, but we 
cannot excuse ourselves when we have taken 
this view of them only. It is pardonable when 
we spurn the proprieties, even the sanctities, 
making them the stepping-stones to something 
higher. 

March 19, 1859. The wind makes such a 
din about your ears that conversation is diffi- 
cult, your words are blown away and do not 
strike the ear they were aimed at. If you walk 
by the water the tumult of the waves confuses 
you. If you go by a tree or enter the woods 
the din is yet greater. Nevertheless this uni- 
versal commotion is very interesting and excit- 
ing. The white pines in the horizon, either 
single trees or whole woods, a mile off in the 
southwest or west, are particularly interesting. 
You not only see the regular bilateral form of 
the tree, all the branches distinct like the frond 



182 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

of a fern or a feather (for the pine even at this 
distance has not merely beauty of outline and 
color, it is not merely an amorphous aoid homo- 
geneous or continuous mass of green, but shows 
a regular succession of flattish leafy boughs or 
stages in flakes, one above another, like the 
veins of a leaf, or the leaflets of a frond; it is 
this richness and symmetry of detail which more 
than its outline charms us), but that fine silvery 
light reflected from its needles (perhaps their 
under sides) incessantly in motion. As a tree 
bends and waves like a feather in the gale, I 
see it alternately dark and light, as the sides of 
the needles which reflect the cool sheen are 
alternately withdrawn from and restored to the 
proper angle. The light appears to flash up- 
ward from the base of the tree incessantly. In 
the intervals of the flash it is often as if the 
tree were withdrawn altogether from sight. I 
see one large pine wood over whose whole top 
these cold electric flashes are incessantly pass- 
ing off harmlessly into the air above. I thought 
at first of some fine spray dashed upward, but 
it is rather like broad flashes of pale, cold 
light. Surely you can never, under other cir- 
cumstances, see a pine wood so expressive, so 
speaking. This reflection of light from the 
waving crests of the earth is like the play and 
flashing of electricity. No deciduous tree ex- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 183 

hibits these fine effects of light. Literally, 
incessant sheets not of heat, but of cold light- 
ning, you would say, were flashing there. 
Seeing some just over the roof of a house which 
was far on this side, I thought at first that it 
was something like smoke even, though a rare 
kind of smoke, that went up from the house. 
In short, you see a play of light over the whole 
pine, similar in its cause to that seen on a wav- 
ing field of grain, but far grander in its effects. 
Seen at mid-day even, it is still the light of 
dewy morning alone that is reflected from the 
needles of the pine. This is the brightening 
and awakening of the pines, a phenomenon, 
perchance, connected with the flow of sap in 
them. I feel somewhat like the young Astya- 
nax at sight of his father's flashing crest. As 
if in this wind storm of March a certain elec- 
tricity were passing from earth to heaven 
through the pines and calling them to life. 

We are interested in the phenomena of na- 
ture mainly as children are, or as we are in 
games of chance. They are more or less excit- 
ing. Our appetite for novelty is insatiable. 
We do not attend to ordinary things, though 
they are most important, but to extraordinary 
ones. While it is only moderately hot or cold, 
or wet or dry, nobody attends to it, but when 
nature goes to an extreme in any of these 



184 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

directions we are all on the alert with excite- 
ment. Not that we care about the philosophy 
or the effects of the phenomenon. E, g,^ when 
I went to Boston in the early train the coldest 
morning of last winter, two topics seemingly 
occupied the attention of the passengers : Mor- 
phy's chess victories, and nature's victorious' 
cold that morning. The inhabitants of various 
towns were comparing notes, and that one 
whose door opened upon a greater degree of 
cold than any of his neighbors' doors chuckled 
not a little. Nearly every one I met asked me, 
almost before the salutations were over, "how 
the glass stood " at my house or in my town, 
— the Librarian of the college, the Register of 
Deeds at Cambridgeport, a total stranger to 
me, . . • and each rubbed his hands with pre- 
tended horror but real delight, if I named a 
higher figure than he had yet heard. It was 
plain that one object which the cold was given 
us for was our amusement, a passing excite- 
ment. It would be perfectly consistent and 
American to bet on the cold of our respective 
towns for the morning that is to come. Thus 
a greater degree of cold may be said to warm 
us more than a less one. This is a perfectly 
legitimate amusement, only we should know 
that each day is peculiar and has its kindred 
excitements. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 185 

In those wet days like the 12th and 15th, 
when the browns cuhninated, the sun being 
concealed, I was drawn towards and worshiped 
the brownish light in the sod, the withered 
grass, etc., on barren hills. I felt as if I could 
eat the very crust of the earth ; I never felt so 
terrene, never sympathized so with the surface 
of the earth. From whatever source the light 
and heat come, thither we look with love. 

March 19, 1860. Going along the turnpike 
I look over to the pitch pines on Moore's hill- 
side, and it strikes me that this pine, take the 
year round, is the most cheerful tree and most 
living to look at and have about your house, it 
is so sunny and full of light, in harmony with 
the yellow sand there and the spring sun. The 
deciduous trees are apparently dead and the 
white pine is much darker, but the pitch pine 
has an ingrained sunniness and is especially 
valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape 
at this season. Yet men will take pains to cut 
down these trees, and set imported larches in 
their places! The pitch pine shines in the 
spring somewhat as the osiers do. 

March 20, 1840. In society all the inspira- 
tion of my lonely hours seems to flow back on 
me, and then first to have expression. • 

Love never degrades its votaries, but lifts 
them up to higher walks of being; they over* 



186 EARLY SPRING IX MASSACHUSETTS 

look one another. All other charities are swal- 
lowed up in this. It is gift and reward both. 
We will have no vulgar cupid for a go-between, 
to make ns the playthings of each other, but 
rather cultivate an irreconcilable hatred instead 
of this. 

March 20, 1841. Even the wisest and best 
are apt to use their lives as the occasion to do 
something else in than to live greatly. But we 
should hang as fondly over this work as the 
finishing and embellishment of a poem. 

It is a great relief when for a few moments 
in the day we can retire to our chamber and be 
completely true to ourselves. It leavens the 
rest of our hours. In that moment I will be 
nakedly as vicious as I am; this false life of 
mine shall have a being at length. 

March 20, 1842. My friend is cold and 
reserved because his love for me is waxing and 
not waning. These are the early processes ; the 
particles are just beginning to shoot in crystals. 
If the mountains came to me I should no longer 
go to the mountains. So soon as that consum- 
mation takes place which I wish, it will be past. 
Shall I not have a friend in reserve ? Heaven 
is to come. I hope this is not it. Words 
should pass between friends as the lightning 
passes from cloud to cloud. 

I don't know how much I assist in the econ« 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 187 

omy of nature when I declare a fact. Is it not 
an important fact in the history of a plant that 
I tell my friend where I found it? 

We do not wish friends to feed and clothe 
our bodies (neighbors are kind enough for that), 
but to do the like offices for our spirits. We 
wish to spread and publish ourselves as the sun 
spreads its rays, and we toss the new thought 
to the friend, and thus it is dispersed. Friends 
are those twain who feel their interests to be 
one. Each knows that the other might as well 
have said what he said. All beauty, all music, 
all delight springs from apparent dualism, but 
real unity. My friend is my real brother. I 
see his nature groping yonder so like my own. 
Does there go one whom I know, then I go 
there. 

Comparatively speaking I care not for the 
man or his designs who would make the very 
highest use of me short of an all-adventuring 
friendship. 

The field where friends have met is conse- 
crated forever. 

Man seeks friendship out of the desire to 
realize a home here. 

As the Indian thinks he receives into himself 
the courage and strength of his conquered 
enemy, so we add to ourselves all the character 
and heart of our friend. He is my creation. 



188 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

I can do what I will with him. There is no 
possibility of being thwarted. The friend is 
like wax in the rays that fall from onr own 
hearts. My friend does not take my word for 
anything, but he takes me. He trusts me as I 
trust myself. We only need to be as true to 
others as we are to ourselves that there may be 
ground enough for friendship. In the bein- 
nings of friendship, for it does not grow, we 
realize such love and justice as are attributed 
to God. 

Very few are they from whom we derive any 
mformation. The most only announce and tell 
tales, but the friend in-forms. 

How simple is the natural connection of 
events. We complain greatly of the want of 
flow and sequence in books, but if the journalist 
only move himself from Boston to New York, 
and speak as before, there is link enough. 
And so there would be if he were as careless of 
connection and order when he stayed at home, 
and let the incessant progress which his life 
makes be the apology for abruptness. Is not 
my life riveted together? has not it sequence? 
Do not my breathings follow each other natu- 
rally ? 

March 20, 1853. I notice the downy, swad- 
dled plants now and in the fall, the fragrant 
life-everlasting and the ribw^ort, innocents bom 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 189 

in a cloud. Those algae I saw the other day in 
John Hosmer's ditch were more like seaweed 
than anything else I have seen in the country. 
They made me look at the whole earth as a 
seashore, reminded me of Nereids, sea-nymphs, 
Tritons, Proteus, etc., etc., made the ditches 
fabulate in an older than the arrowheaded 
character. Better learn this strange character 
which nature uses to-day than the Sanskrit, 
"books in the brooks." . . . 

It is evident that the English do not enjoy 
that contrast between winter and smnmer that 
we do, that there is too much greenness and 
spring in the winter, there is no such wonder- 
ful resurrection of the year. Birds kindred 
with our first spring ones remain with them aU 
winter, and flowers answering to our earliest 
spring ones put forth there in January. They 
have no winter in our sense, only a winter like 
our spring. 

The peculiarity of to-day is that now first 
you perceive that dry, warm, summer-presaging 
scent from dry oaks and other leaves on the 
sides of hills and ledges. You smell the sum- 
mer from afar. The warmth makes a man 
young again. There is also some dryness, 
almost dustiness, in the roads. The mountains 
are white with snow. When the wind is north- 
west, it is now wintry, but at present it is more 



190 EABLT SPRIXG IS MASSACHUSETTS 

westerly. The edges of die momituiu melt 
into the sky. It is affecting to be pot into 
comnmnication with sach distant objects by the 
power of Tision, actnally to iook into sach lands 
of promise. 

In this spring breeze, bow foil of life the ail- 
very pines, probably the under sides of their 
leaves. The canoe-birch spronts are red or 
salmon coh>red like those of the common, bitt 
soon they cast oS their salmon-oolored jackets, 
and come forth with a white but naked look, 
all dangling with ragged reddish curls. TVliat 
is that little bird that makes so much use of 
these cor la in its nest lined with coarse grass? 

In a stubble field started up a bevy (about 
twenty) of quail which went off to some young 
pitch pines with a whir like a shot, the plump 
round birds. The redpolls are still unmerons. 
(Ilave not seen them again, March 28tb.) 

March 20, 1855. It is remarkable by what 
a gradation of days which we call pleasant and 
warm, beginning in the last of February, we 
come at last to real summer warmth. At first 
a sunuy, calm, serene winter day is pronounced 
Hpring, or reminds us of it. And even the first 
pleasant spring day, perhaps, we walk with our 
great-coat buttoned up, and gloves on. 

Trying the other day to imitate the honking 
of geese, I found myself fiapping my sides with 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 191 

my elbows, and uttering something Kke snowack 
with a nasal twang and twist of my head, and 
I produced the note so perfectly in the opinion 
of the hearers, that I thought I might possibly 
draw a flock down. 

We notice the color of the water especially at 
this season, when it is recently revealed (and in 
the fall), because there is little color elsewhere. 
It shows best in a clear air, contrasting with 
the russet shores. 

March 20, 1858. a. m. By river. The 
tree-sparrow is perhaps the sweetest and most 
melodious warbler at present and for some days. 
It is peculiar, too, for singing in concert along 
the hedge-rows, much like a canary, especially 
in the mornings, very clear, sweet, melodious 
notes, between a twitter and a warble, of which 
it is hard to catch the strain, for you commonly 
hear many at once. The note of the Fringilla 
hiemalis, or chill-tiU, is a jingle, with also a 
shorter and drier crackling chip as it flits by. 

At Hubbard's wall how handsome the willow 
catkins ! Those wonderfully bright silvery but- 
tons so regularly disposed in oval schools in the 
air, or, if you please, along the seams which 
the twigs make, in all degrees of forwardness, 
from the faintest, tiniest speck of silver just 
peeping from beneath the black scales to lusty 
pussies which have thrown ofif their scaly coats, 



192 EARLY SPBISG IX MASSACHCSETTS 

and fthoir tome redness at base or on dose in- 
gpectum^ These fixed swanits of arcde bods 
KffA, the air xerj pretdh- along the hedges. 
Thejr remiiid me siMiiewhat br their brilliaiicj 
of the mow-flakes, which are so bright br c<mi- 
trajit at this season when the sun is higli. The j 
are gr^ish, not nearly so sQTenr a week or ten 
days hiter, when more expanded, showing the 
dark scales. 

The fishes are going op the brooks as they 
open; they are dispersing themselves through 
the fields and woods, imparting new life into 
them. They are taking their places under the 
shelving banks and in the dark swamps. The 
water running down meets the fishes nmning 
up. They hear the latest news. Spring- 
aroused fishes are running up our veins too. 
Little fishes are seeking the sources of the 
brooks, seeking to disseminate their principles. 
Talk about a revival of religion! Business 
men'B prayer-meetings, with which all the coun- 
try goes mad now I What if it were as true 
and wholesome a revival as the little fishes feel 
which come out of the sluggish waters, and run 
up the brooks toward their sources. All Nature 
revives at this season. With her it is really a 
new life. It cheers me to. behold the swarms 
of gnats which have revived in the spring sun. 
The fish lurks by the mouth of its native brook 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 193 

watching its opportunity to dart up the stream 
by the cakes of ice. Do the fishes stay to hold 
prayer-meetings in Fair Haven Bay, whije some 
monstrous pike gulps them down? Or is not 
each one privately, or with kindred spirits, as 
soon as possible, stenmiing the course of its 
native brook, making its way to more ethereal 
waters, burnishing its scaly armor by its speed? 
. . . No wonder we feel the spring influences. 
There is a motion in the very ground under our 
feet. Each rill is peopled with new life rush- 
ing up it. 

In order that a house and grounds may be 
picturesque and interesting in the highest de- 
gree, they must suggest the idea of necessity, 
proving the devotion of the builder, not of lux- 
ury. We need to see the honest and naked 
life here and there protruding. What is a fort 
without any foe before it ? that is not now sus- 
taining and never has sustained a siege ? The 
gentleman whose purse is always full, and who 
can meet all demands, though he employs the 
most famous artists, can never make a very in- 
teresting seat. He does not carve from near 
enough to the bone. No man is rich enough to 
keep a poet in his pay. 

March 20, 1859. p. M. I see under the 
east side of the house, amid the evergreens, 
where they are sheltered from the cold north- 



IM EARLY SPRIXG IX MASSACHUSETTS 

west wind, a cmnpanT of sparrows, chiefly 
FringSla hiemalisj two or three tree-sparrows, 
and one song-sparrow, qoietlT feeding together. 
I watch them through a window within six or 
eight feet. The^ CTidentlT love to be sheltered 
from the wind, and at least are not averse to 
each other's society. One perches on a bush to 
sing, while others are feeding on the ground; 
but he is Tery restless on his perch, hopping 
about and stooping, as if dodging those that fly 
over. He must perch on some bit of stubble or 
some twig to sing. The tree-sparrows sing a 
little. They are evidently picking up the seeds 
of weeds which lie on the surface of the ground, 
invisible to our eyes. They suffer their wings 
to hang rather loose. The Fringilla hiemalis 
is the largest of the three. It has a remarka- 
bly distinct light-colored bill, and when it 
stretches shows very distinct clear white lateral 
tail feathers. This stretching seems to be con- 
tagious among them, like yawning with us. 
The tree-sparrows are much brighter brown and 
white than the song-sparrow. The latter alone 
scratches once or twice, and is more inclined to 
hop or creep close to the ground under the 
fallen weeds. Perhaps it deserves most to be 
called the ground-bird, 

March 21, 1840. Our limbs, indeed, have 
room enough ; it is our souls that rust in a cor- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 195 

ner. Let us migrate Interiorly without inter- 
mission, and pitch our tent each day nearer the 
western horizon. The really fertile soils and 
luxuriant prairies lie on this side the Allegha- 
nies. There has been no Hanno of the affec- 
tions. Their domain is untraveled ground to 
the Mogul's dominions. 

March 21, 1841. To be associated with 
others by my friend's generosity when he be- 
stows a gift is an additional favor to be grateful 
for. 

March 21, 1853. p. m. To Kibbe Place. 
The Stellaria media is fairly in bloom in Mr. 

C 's garden. This, then, is our earliest 

flower, though it is said to have been intro- 
duced. It may blossom under favorable cir- 
cumstances, in warmer weather than usual, any 
time in the winter. It has been so much 
opened that you could easily count its petals 
any month the past winter, and plainly blos- 
soms with the first pleasant weather that brings 
the robins, etc., in numbers. The bees this 
morning had access to no flower, so they came 
to the grafting wax on my boat, though it was 
mixed with tallow and covered with fresh paint. 
Often they essayed to light on it and retreated 
in disgust. Yet one got caught. As they de- 
tected the wax concealed and disguised in this 
composition, so they will receive the earliest 



196 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

intelligence of the blossoming of the first flower 
which contains any sweetness for them. It is a 
genial and reassuring day; the mere warmth of 
the west wind amounts almost to balminess. 
The softness of the air mollifies our own dry 
and congealed substance. I sit down by a wall 
to see if I can muse again. We become, as it 
were, pliant and ductile again to strange but 
memorable influences; we are led a little way 
by our genius. We are affected like the earth, 
and yield to the elemental tenderness. Winter 
breaks up within us. The frost is coming out 
of me, and I am heaved like the road. Accu- 
mulated masses of ice and snow dissolve, and 
thoughts, like a freshet, pour down unwonted 
channels. A strain of music comes to solace 
the traveler over earth's downs and dignify his 
chagrins. The petty men whom he meets are 
shadows of grander to come. Boads lead else- 
whither than to Carlisle and Sudbury. The 
earth is uninhabited, but fair to inhabit, like 
the old Carlisle road. Is, then, the road so 
rough that it should be neglected? Not only 
narrow, but rough, is the way that leadeth to 
life everlasting. Our experience does not wear 
upon us. It is seen to be fabulous or symboli- 
cal, and the future is worth expecting. En- 
couraged, I set out once more to climb the 
mountain of the earth, for my steps are sym« 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 197 

bolical steps, and I have not reached the top of 
the earth yet. 

In two or three places I hear the ground- 
squirrel's first chirrup or qui vive in the wall, 
like a bird or a cricket. Though I do not see 
him, the sun has reached him too. 

Ah, then ! as I was rising this crownmg road, 
just beyond the old lime-kiln, there leaked into 
my open ear the faint peep of a hyla from some 
far pool. One little hyla, somewhere in the 
fens, aroused by the genial season, crawls up 
the bank or a bush, squats on a dry leaf, and 
essays a note or two which scarcely rends the 
air, does no violence to the zephyr, but yet 
leaks through aU obstacles and far over the 
downs to the ear of the listening naturalist, as 
it were the first faint cry of the new-bom year, 
notwithstanding the notes of birds. Where so 
long I have heard only the prattling and moan- 
ing of the wind, what means this tenser, far- 
piercing sound? AU nature rejoices with one 
joy. If the hyla has revived again, why may 
not I? 

Whatever your sex or position, life is a bat- 
tle in which you are to show your pluck, and 
woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a 
bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the 
same fair play, and admits no foolish distinc- 
tion. Despair and postponement axe cowaxdice 



198 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to 
fail. 

March 21, 1854. At sunrise to Clam-shell 
Hill. River skimmed over at Willow Bay last 
night. Thought I should find ducks cornered 
up by the ice. They get behind this hill for 
shelter. Saw what looked like clods of ploughed 
meadow rising above the ice. Looked with 
glass and found it to be more than thirty black 
ducks asleep with their heads in their backs, 
motionless, thin ice being formed about them. 
Soon one or two were moving about slowly. 
There was an open space, eight or ten rods by 
one or two. At first all were within a space of 
apparently less than a rod in diameter. It was 
Q^ A. M. and the sun shining on them, but bit- 
ter cold. How tough they are. I crawled far 
on my stomach and got a near view of them, 
thirty rods ofif. At length they detected me 
and quacked. Some got out upon the ice, and 
when I rose up, all took to flight in a great 
straggling flock, looking at a distance like 
crows, in no order. Yet when you see two or 
three, the parallelism produced by their necks 
and bodies steering the same way gives the idea 
of order. 

March 21, 1855. The tree-sparrow, flitting 
song-sparrow-like through the alders, utters a 
sharp metallic tcheep. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 199 

March 21, 1856. 10 a. m. To my red 
maple sugar camp. Found that after a pint 
and a half had. run from a single tube after 3 
p. M. yesterday afternoon, it had frozen about 
half an inch thick, and this morning a quarter 
of a pint more had run. Between 10|^ and 11|^ 
A. M. this forenoon I caught two and three 
quarters pints more from six tubes at the same 
tree, though it is completely overcast, and 
threatening rain, — four and one half pints in 
all. The sap is an agreeable drink like iced 
water, by chance, with a pleasant but slightly 
sweetish taste. I boiled it down in the after- 
noon, and it made one and one half ounces of 
sugar, without any molasses. This appears to 
be the average amount yielded by the sugar 
maple in similar circumstances, viz.^ on the 
south edge of a wood, and on a tree partly de- 
cayed, two feet in diameter. It is worth while 
to know that there is all this sugar in our 
woods, much of which might be obtained by 
using the refuse wood lying about, without 
damage to the proprietors, who use neither the 
sugar nor the wood. I put in saleratus and a 
little milk while boiling, the former to neutral- 
ize the acid, and the latter to collect the impuri- 
ties in a scum. After boiling it till I burned 
it a little, and my small quantity would not 
flow when cool, but was as hard as half-done 



200 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

candy, I put it on again, and in a minute it was 
softened and turned to sugar. Had a dispute 
with father about the use of my making this 
sugar when I knew it could be done, and might 
have bought sugar cheaper at Holden's. He 
said it took me from my studies. I said I 
made it my study and felt as if I had been to a 
UM-ersi^' tJ^ d«,ppea f«... «»h taU 
about as fast as my pulse beat, and as there 
were three tubes directed to each vessel it 
flowed at the rate of about one hundred and 
eighty drops a minute into it. One maple, 
standing immediately north of a thick white 
pine, scarcely flowed at all, while a smaller one, 
farther in the wood, ran pretty well. The 
south side of a tree bleeds first in the spring. 
Had a three-quarter inch auger. Made a dozen 
spouts five or six inches long, hole as large as 
a pencil, and smoothed with one. 

March 21, 1858. p. m. To Ministerial 
Swamp via Little Eiver. I hear the pleasant 
phebe note of the chickadee. It is, methinks, 
more like a wilderness note than any other I 
have heard yet. It is peculiarly interesting 
that this, which is one of our winter birds also, 
should have a note with which to welcome the 
spring. 

March 22, 1840. While I bask in the sun 
on the shores of Walden Fond, by this heat 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 201 

and this rustle I am absolved from all obliga- 
tion to the past. The council of nations may 
reconsider their votes. The grating of a pebble 
annuls them. 

March 22, 1842. Nothing can be more use- 
ful to a man than a determination not to be 
hurried. 

I have not succeeded if I have an antagonist 
who fans. It must be humanity's success. 

I cannot think nor utter my thoughts unless 
I have infinite room. The cope of heaven is 
not too high, the sea is not too deep, for him 
who would unfold a great thought. It must 
feed me, and warm and clothe me. It must be 
an entertainment to which my whole nature is 
invited. I must know that the gods are to be 
my feUow-guests. 

March 22, 1853. As soon as those spring 
mornings arrive in which the birds sing, I am 
sure to be an early riser, I am waked by my 
genius, I wake to inaudible melodies, and am 
surprised to find myself awaiting the dawn in 
so serene and joyful and expectant a mood. I 
have an appointment with Spring. She comes 
to the window to wake me, and I go forth an 
hour or two earlier than usual. It is by es- 
pecial favor that I am waked, not rudely, but 
gently, as infants should be waked. . • • 
When we wake indeed with a double awaken^ 



202 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

ing, not only from onr ordinary noctnmal slum- 
bers, but from onr diurnal, we burst through 
the thallus of our ordinary life, we awake with 
emphasis. ... 

6 A. M. To Cliffs. It affects one's philoso- 
phy after so long living in winter quarters to 
see the day dawn from some hill. Our effete, 
lowland town is fresh as New Hampshire. It 
is as if we had migrated and were ready to be- 
gin life again in a new country with new hopes 
and resolutions. See your town with the dew 
on it, in as wild a morning mist (though thin) 
as ever draped it. To stay in the house all day 
such reviving spring days as the past have been, 
bending over a stove and gnawing one's heart, 
seems to me as absurd as for a woodchuck to 
linger in his burrow. We have not heard the 
news then! sucking the claws of our philosophy 
when there is game to be had. 

The tapping of the woodpecker, rat-tat-tat^ 
knocking at the door of some sluggish grub to 
tell him that the spring has arrived, and his 
fate, this is one of the season sounds, calling 
the roll of birds and insects, the reveille. The 
Cliff woods are comparatively silent. Not yet 
the woodland birds (except, perhaps, the wood- 
pecker, so far as it migrates), only the orchard 
and river birds have arrived. Probably the 
improvements of men thus advance the seasons. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 203 

This is the Bahamas and the tropics or turning 
point to the redpoll. Is not the woodpecker 
(downy?) our first woodland bird, come to see 
what effects the frost and snow and rain have 
produced on the decaying trees, what trunks 
will drum? . . . 

The oak plain is still red. There are no 
expanding leaves to greet and reflect the sun 
as it first falls over the hill. 

I go along the river-side to see the now novel 
reflections. The invading waters have left a 
thousand little isles where willows and sweet 
gale and the meadow itself appears. I hear 
the phebe note of the chickadee, one taking it 
up behind another, as in a catch, phe-bee phe- 
hee. 

That is an interesting morning when one 
first uses the warmth of the sun instead of fire, 
bathes in the sun as anon in the river, eschew- 
ing fire, draws up to the garret window and 
warms his thoughts at nature*s great central 
fire, as does the buzzing fly by his side. Like 
it, too, our Muse, wiping the dust off her long 
unused wings, goes blundering through the cob- 
webs of criticism, more dusty still, and carries 
away the half of them. What miserable cob- 
web is that which has hitherto escaped the 
broom, whose spider is invisible, but the 
"North American Review " ? 



204 EARLY SPRIXG IX MASSACHUSETTS 

Hylodes I^i'^-mnffiL a name that is longer 
than the frog itself! A deseriptian of animals, 
too« from a dead specimen only, as if in a work 
on man ygq were to describe a dead man onfy, 
omitting his manners and costoms, his institu- 
tions and divine Acuities, from want of op- 
portunity to obserre them, suggesting, perhaps, 
that the colors of the ere are said to be much 
more brilliant in the living specimen, and that 
some cannibal, your neighbor, who has tried 
him on his table, has found him to be sweet 
and nutritious, good on the gridiron, having 
had no opportunity to observe his habits, be- 
cause you do not live in the oountiy. Nothing 
is known of his habits. Food — seeds of 
wheat, beef, pork, and potatoes. 

I told Stacy the other day that there was 
another volume of De Quincey's '* Essays," 
wanting to see it in his library. "I know it," 
says he, "but I shan't buy any more of them, 
for nobody reads them." I asked what book 
in his library was most read. He said, "The 
Wide, Wide World." 

In a little dried and bleached tortoise shell 
about one and three fourths inches long I can 
easily study his anatomy and the house he lives 
in. His ribs are now distinctly revealed under 
his lateral scales, slanted like rafters to the 
ridge of his roof, for his sternum is so large 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 205 

that his ribs are driven round upon his back. 
It is wonderful to see what a perfect piece of 
dovetailing his house is, the different plates of 
his shell fitting into each other by a thousand 
sharp teeth or serrations, and the scales always 
breaking joints over them so as to bind the 
whole firmly together, all parts of his abode 
variously interspliced and dovetailed. An ar- 
chitect might learn much from a faithful study 
of it. There are three large diamond-shaped 
openings down the middle of the sternum, cov- 
ered only by the scales, through which perhaps 
he feels, he breasts the earth. His roof rests 
on four stout posts. This young one is very 
deep in proportion to its breadth. 

March 22, 1855. P. m. Fair Haven Pond 
via Conantum. • • • On the steep hillside south 
of the pond I observed a rotten and hollow 
hemlock stump about two feet high, and six 
inches in diameter, and instinctively approached 
with my right hand ready to cover it. I found 
a flying squirrel in it, which, as my left hand 
covered a small hole at the bottom, ran directly 
into my right hand. It struggled and bit not a 
little, but my cotton gloves protected me, and 
I felt its teeth only once or twice. It also 
uttered three or four dry shrieks at first, some- 
thing like Cr-r-r-ack cr-r-r-ack cr-r-r-ack. I 
rolled it up in my handkerchief, and holding 



i(«i T-ir^ 5?2:Z7r? zr -r^^^ - 



^n 



-nuTi-^ jz szrcs^^tsL. janBir nr jbs mH '^k^ 



ir irmrw* Tim^a*- ■r iTTi^ 'SBTOO^ 

73if- TiBTtrfc-^'^rTihT: . SILL tmrst 3& Tan. is 



LSI TTr'rrrTT'r xi Zivx nr cr 






m m 

%^j.z rJjat -cTt^ £iiTr ii iZi rner^ssa] 
l>:i. lis x-czj zirai- -^&.T, fii-v^r-eichka^d, 
ons ia£I Tis i p^sii v*r=i*zDK:i. Its *'sauls** 
wci>? zl:^ Tr^ c'rTirf:::^ -■^bezi ii m»5 at rest, 
merelv s^TirL^ h a £ij ar-T»jiir:iace beneath. It 
would Itiap q5 ^zii upvard iqio the air two or 
tlii«e feet from a taole^ spr>E^diiig its ** sails,'* 
and fall to the floor in vain, perhaps strike the 
side of the room in its npwaid spring and en- 
deavor to cling to it. It would ran np the 
window by the sash, but evidently found the 
furniture aud walls and floor too hard and 
smooth for it, and, after some falls, became 
quiet. In a few moments it allowed me to 
stroke it, though far from confident. I put it 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 207 

in a barrel and covered it up for, the night. It 
was quite busy all the evening gnawing out, 
clinging for this purpose and gnawing at the 
upper edge of a sound oak barrel, and then 
dropping to rest from time to time. It had 
defaced the barrel considerably by morning, 
and would probably have escaped, if I had not 
placed a piece of iron against the gnawed part. 
I had left in the barrel some bread, apple, 
shagbarks, and cheese. It ate some of the 
apple and one shagbark, cutting it quite in two 
transversely. In the morning it was quiet, 
and squatted, somewhat curled up, amid the 
straw, with its tail passing under it and the end 
curved over its head, very prettily, as if to 
shield it from the light and keep it warm. I 
always found it in this position by day when I 
raised the lid. 

March 23, 1855. Carried my flying squir- 
rel back to the woods in my handkerchief. I 
placed it on the very stump I had taken it from. 
It immediately ran about a rod over the leaves 
and up a slender maple sapling about ten feet, 
then after a moment's pause sprang off and 
skimmed downward toward a large maple nine 
feet distant, whose trunk it struck three or four 
feet from the ground. This it rapidly ascended 
on the opposite side from me, nearly thirty feet, 
and then clung to the main stem with its head 



208 EARLY SPRJOfG IX JfASSACM L SETTS 

(iownwani^ eyiog me. AftRr two or tiiree miii;- 
aces' paaafer I ^olw that it wa» preparm^ ftx* 
anodier spring hv rabing its Iiead and looking 
«ff, and .way it ;ent in admirable strk, mor^ 
Vke % bird diaii any qxiadmped I Iiad dreamed 
o€^ and far 9iirpck»ing tiie impreasiai I had le- 
eeived from naturalists* accocmts^ I marked 
the spot it started from and the place where it 
stmek, and measared the height and distXDce 
carefolly. It sprang off from the maple at the 
hei^t of twentr-eight feet and a half, and 
stmek the groond at the foot of a tree fifty and 
one half feet distant, measared horixontally. 
Its flight was not a regular descent. It Taried 
from a direct line both horizontaUy and verti- 
cally. Indeed, it skimmed much like a hawk, 
and part of its flight was nearly horizontal. It 
diverged from a right line eight or ten feet to 
the right, making a curve in that direction. 
There were six trees from six inches to a foot 
in diameter, one a hemlock, in a direct line be- 
tween the termini, and these it skimmed partly 
round, passing through their thinner limbs. It 
did not, so far as I could perceive, touch a twig. 
It skimmed its way like a hawk between and 
around the trees. Though it was a windy day, 
this was on a steep hillside covered with wood 
and away from the wind, so it was not aided 
by that. As the ground rose about two feet. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 209 

the distance was to the absolute height as fifty 
and one half feet to twenty-six and one half 
feet, or it advanced about two feet for every 
foot of descent. After the various attempts in 
the house I was not prepared for this exhibi- 
tion. It did not fall heavily as in the house, 
but struck the ground quietly enough, and I 
cannot believe that the mere extension of the 
skin enabled it to skim so far. It must be still 
further aided by its organization. Perhaps it 
fills itself with air first. . . . Kicking over 
the hemlock stump, which was a mere shell 
with holes below, and a poor refuge, I was sur- 
prised to find a little nest at the bottom, open 
above just like a bird's nest, a mere bed. It 
was composed of leaves, shreds of bark, and 
dead pine needles. As I remember^ this squir- 
rel was not more than an inch and a half broad 
when at rest, but when skimming through the 
air I should say it was four inches broad. This 
is the impression I now have. Captain J. 
Smith says it is reported to fly thirty or forty 
yards. One Gideon B. Smith, M. D., of Bal- 
timore, who has had much to do with these 
squirrels, speaks of their curving upward at the 
end of their flight to alight on a tree trunk, and 
of their "flying" into his windows. In order 
to perform all these flights, to strike a tree at 
such a distance, etc., etc., it is evident it must 



210 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

be able to steer. I shonld say that mine steered 
like a hawk, that moves without flapping its 
wings, never being able, however, to get a new 
impetus after the first spring. 

March 22, 1860. Some of the phenomena 
of an average March are increasing warmth, 
melting the snow and ice, and gradually the 
frost in the ground; cold and blustering 
weather, with high, conunonly northwest winds 
for many days together; misty and other rains 
taking out frosts, whitenings of snow, and win- 
ter often back again, both its cold and snow; 
bare ground and open waters, and more or less 
of a freshet ; some calm and pleasant days re- 
minding us of summer, with a blue haze or a 
thicker mist over the woods at last^ in which, 
perchance, we take ofiF our coats a while, and 
sit without a fire ; the ways getting settled, and 
some greenness appearing on south banks; 
April-like rains after the frost is chiefly out; 
ploughing and planting of peas, etc., just be- 
ginning, and the old leaves getting dry in the 
woods. 

March 22, 1861. A driving northeast snow 
storm yesterday and last night, and to-day the 
drifts are high over the fences, and the trains 
stopped. The Boston train due at 8^ A. M. did 
not reach here till 5 this P. M. One side of all 
the houses this morning was one color, i. e., 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 211 

white, with the moist snow plastered over them 
so that you could not tell whether they had 
blinds or not. 

When we consider how soon some plants 
which spread rapidly by seeds or roots would 
cover an area equal to the surface of the globe, 
how soon some species of trees, as the white 
willow, for instance, would equal in mass the 
earth itself, if all their seeds became full-grown 
trees, how soon some fishes would fill the ocean 
if all their ova became full-grown fishes, we Are 
tempted to say that every organism, whether 
animal or vegetable, is contending for the pos- 
session of the planet, and if any one were suffi- 
ciently, favored, supposing it still possible to 
grow as at first, it would at length convert the 
entire mass of the globe into its own substance. 
Nature opposes to this many obstacles, as cli- 
mate, myriads of brute and also human foes, 
and of competitors which may preoccupy the 
ground. Each species suggests an immense 
and wonderful greediness and tenacity of life, 
as if bent on taking entire possession of the 
globe wherever the climate and soil will permit; 
and each prevails as much as it does, because of 
the ample preparations it has made for the con- 
test. It has received a myriad chances, because 
it never depends on spontaneous generation to 
save it. 



212 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 23, 1853. 5 a. m. I hear the robin 
sing before I rise. 6 A. M. Up the North 
River. A fresh, cool, spring morning. The 
white maple may, perhaps, be said to begin to 
blossom to-day, the male, for the stamens, both 
anthers and filaments, are conspicuous on some 
buds. It has opened unexpectedly, and a rich 
sight it is, looking up through the expanded 
buds to the sky. This and the aspen are the 
first trees that ever grow large, I believe, which 
show the influence of the season thus conspicu- 
ously. From Nawshawtuck I see the snow is off 
the mountains. A large aspen by the island is 
unexpectedly forward. I already see the red an- 
thers appearing. It will bloom in a day or two. 

One studies books of science merely to learn 
the language of naturalists, to be able to com- 
municate with them. 

The frost in swamps and meadows makes it 
good walking there still. Away, away to the 
swamps where the silver catkins of the swamp 
willow shine a quainter of a mile off, those 
southward penetrating vales of Rupert's Land. 
The birds, which are merely migratory or tarry- 
ing here for a season, are especially gregarious 
now, the redpoll, Fiingilla hiemalis^ fox-col- 
ored sparrow, etc. I judge by the dead bodies 
of frogs partially devoured in brooks and ditches 
that many are killed in their hibernacula. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 213 

Evelyn and others wrote when the language 
was in a tender, nascent state, and could be 
moulded to express the shades of meaning; 
when sesquipedalian words, long since cut and 
apparently dried and drawn to mill, not yet to 
the dictionary lumber-yard, put forth a fringe 
of green sprouts here and there along in the 
angles of their sugared bark, their very bulk 
insuring some sap remaining; some florid suck- 
ers they sustain at least. These words, split 
into shingles and laths, will supply poets for 
ages to come. 

A man can't ask properly for a piece of 
bread and butter without some animal spirits. 
A child can't cry without them. 

p. M. To Heywood's Meadow. The tele- 
graph harp sounds more commonly now that 
westerly winds prevail. The winds of winter 
are too boisterous, too violent or rude, and do 
not strike it at the right angle when I walk, so 
that it becomes one of the spring sounds. The 
ice went out of Walden this forenoon; of 
Flint's Pond day before yesterday, I have no 
doubt. 

The buds of the shad-blossom look green. 
The crimson-starred flowers of the hazel begin 
to peep out, though the catkins have not 
opened. The alders are almost generally in 
full bloom, and a very handsome and interesting 



214 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

show they make with their graceful tawny pen- 
dants inclining to yellow. They shake like ear- 
drops in the wind, almost the first completed 
ornaments with which the new year decks her- 
self. Their yellow pollen is shaken down and 
colors my coat like sulphur as I pass through 
them. I go to look for mud-turtles in Hey- 
wood's Meadow. The alder catkins just burst 
open are prettily marked spirally by streaks of 
yellow, contrasting with alternate rows of rich 
reddish brown scales, which make one revolu- 
tion in the length of the catkin. I hear in 
Heywood's north meadow the most unmusical 
low croak from one or two frogs, though it is 
half ice there yet. A remarkable note with 
which to greet the new year, as if one's teeth 
slid ofiF with a grating sound in cracking a nut, 
but not a frog nor a dimple to be seen. 

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look 
at Nature directly, but only with the side of his 
eye. He must look through and beyond her. 
To look at her is as fatal as to look at the head 
of Medusa. It turns the man of science to 
stone. I feel that I am dissipated by so many 
observations. I should be the magnet in the 
midst of all this dust and filings. I knock the 
back of my hand against a rock, and as I 
smooth back the skin I find myself prepared to 
study lichens there. I look upon man but as 






EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 215 

a fungus. I have almost a slight, dry headache 
as the result of all this observation. How to 
observe is how to behave. Oh, for a little 
Lethe. To crown all, lichens which are so thin 
are described in the dry state, as they are most 
commonly, not most truly seen. They are, in- 
deed, dryly described. 

Without being the owner of any land, I find 
that I have a civil right in the river, that if I 
am not a land-owner I am a water-owner. It 
is fitting, therefore, that I should have a boat, 
a cart, for this my farm. Since it is almost 
wholly given up to a few of us, while the other 
highways are much traveled, no wonder that I 
improve it. Such a one as I will choose to 
dwell in a township where there are most ponds 
and rivers, and our range is widest. In rela- 
tion to the river, I find my natural rights least 
infringed on. It is an extensive "common" 
still left. Certain savage liberties still prevail 
in the oldest and most civilized countries. I 
am pleased to find that in Gilbert White's day, 
at least, the laborers in that part of England 
where he lived enjoyed certain rights of com- 
mon in the royal forests, so called, where they 
cut their turf and other fuel, etc., though no 
large wood, and obtained materials for broom- 
making, etc., when other labor failed. It is 
no longer so, according to the editor. 



216 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

The cat-tail down puffs and swells in your 
hand like a mist, or the conjurer's trick of fill- 
ing a hat with feathers, for when you have 
rubbed off but a thimbleful, and can close and 
conceal the wound completely, the expanded 
down fills your hand to overflowing. Appar- 
ently there is a spring to the fine elastic threads 
which compose the down, which, after having 
been so long closely packed, on being the least 
relieved, spring open apace into the form of 
parachutes to convey the seed afar. Where 
birds, or the winds, or ice have assaulted them, 
this has spread like an eruption. 

March 23, 1856. I spend a considerable 
portion of my time observing the habits of the 
wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their 
various movements and migrations they fetch 
the year about to me. Very significant are the 
flight of geese and the migration of suckers, 
etc. But when I consider that the nobler ani- 
mals have been exterminated here, the cougar, 
panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, 
deer, beaver, turkey, etc., etc., I cannot but 
feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, 
emasculated country. Would not the motions 
of those larger and wilder animals have been 
more significant still? Is it not a maimed and 
imperfect nature that I am conversant with? 
As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 217 

had lost all its warriors. Do not the forest and 
the meadow now lack expression? now that I 
never see nor think of the moose with a lesser 
forest on his head in the one, nor of the beaver 
in the other? When I think what were the 
various sounds and notes, the migrations and 
works, and changes of fur and plumage, which 
ushered in the spring and marked the other 
seasons of the year, I am reminded that this my 
life in nature, this particular round of natural 
phenomena which I call a year, is lamentably 
incomplete. I listen to a concert in which so 
many parts are wanting. The whole civilized 
country is, to some extent, turned into a city, 
and I am that citizen whom I pity. Many of 
those animal migrations and other phenomena 
by which the Indians marked the season are 
no longer to be observed. I seek acquaintance 
with Nature to know her moods and manners. 
Primitive nature is the most interesting to me. 
I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena 
of the spring, for instance, thinking that I 
have here the entire poem, and then, to my 
chagrin, I learn that it is but an imperfect copy 
that I possess and have read, that my ancestors 
have torn out many of the first leaves and 
grandest passages, and mutilated it in many 
places. I should not like to think that some 
demigod had come before me and picked out 



218 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

some of the best of the stars. I wish to know 
an entire heaven and an entire earth. A-U the 
great trees and beasts, fishes and fowl are gone ; 
the streams perchance are somewhat shrunk. 

p. M. To Walden. I think I may say that 
the snow has not been less than a foot deep on 
a level in open land until to-day, since January 
6th, about eleven weeks. I am reassured and 
reminded that I am the heir of eternal inheri- 
tances which are inalienable, when I feel the 
warmth reflected from this sunny bank, and see 
the yellow sand and the reddish subsoil, and 
hear some dried leaves rustle and the trickling 
of melting snow in some sluiceway. The eter- 
nity which I detect in nature I predicate of 
myself also. How many springs I have had 
this same experience! I am encouraged, for I 
recognize this steady persistency and recovery 
of nature, as a quality of myself. Now the 
steep south hillsides begin to be bare, and the 
early sedge and the sere, but still fragrant, pen- 
nyroyal and rustling leaves are exposed, and you 
see where the mice have sheared ofiF the sedge, 
and also made nests of its top during the winter. 
There, too, the partridges resort, and perhaps 
you hear the bark of a striped squirrel, and see 
him scratch toward his hole, rustling the leaves; 
for all the inhabitants of nature are attracted 
by this bare and dry spot as well as you. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 219 

The muskrat houses were certainly very few 
and small last summer, and the river has been 
remarkably low up to this time, while the pre- 
vious fall they were very numerous and large, 
and in the succeeding winter the river rose re- 
markably high. So much for the muskrat 
sign. 

March 23, 1859. p. m. Walk to Cardinal 
Shore, and sail to Well Meadow and Lee's 
Cliff. As we entered Well Meadow we saw a 
hen-hawk perch on the topmost plume of the tall 
pines at the head of the meadow; soon another 
appeared, probably its mate, but we looked in 
vain for a nest there. It was a fine sight, their 
soaring above our heads, presenting a perfect 
outline and, as they came round, showing their 
rust-colored tails with a whitish rump, or, as 
they sailed away from us, that slight tetering 
or quivering motion of their dark-tipped wings, 
seen edgewise, now on this side, now on that, 
by which they balanced and directed themselves. 
These are the most eagle-like of our common 
hawks. They very commonly perch upon the 
very topmost plume of a pine, and, if motion- 
less, are rather hard to distinguish there. 

While reconnoitring we hear the peep of one 
hylodes somewhere in the sheltered recess in the 
woods, and afterward, on the Lee side shore, a 
single croak from a wood-frog. 



220 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

We cross to Lee's shore and sit upon the 
bare rocky ridge overlooking the flood south- 
west and northeast. It is quite sunny and 
sufficiently warm. The prospect thence is a 
fine one, especially at this season when the 
water is high. The landscape is very agree- 
ably diversified with hill and dale, meadow and 
cliff. As we look southwest how attractive the 
shores of russet capes and peninsulas laved by 
the flood. Indeed, that large tract east of the 
bridge is now an island. How firm that low, 
undulating, russet-land! At this season and 
under these circumstances, the sun just come out 
and the flood high around it, russet, so reflect- 
ing the light of the sun, appears to me the most 
agreeable of colors, and I begin to dream of a 
russet fairy-land and Elysium. How dark and 
terrene must be green, but this smooth russet 
reflects almost all the light. That broad and 
low, but firm island, with but few trees to con- 
ceal the contour of the ground and its outline, 
with its fine russet sward, firm and soft as vel- 
vet, reflecting so much light; all the undula- 
tions of the earth, its nerves and muscles re- 
vealed by the light and shade, and the sharper 
ridgy edge of steep banks where the plough 
has heaped up the earth from year to year, this 
is a sort of fairy-land and Elysium to my eye. 
The tawny, couchant island ! Dry land for the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 221 

Indian's wigwam in the spring, and still strewn 
with his arrow-points. The sight of such land 
reminds me of the pleasant spring days in which 
I have walked over such tracts looking for these 
relics. How well, too, the smooth, firm, light- 
reflecting, tawny earth contrasts with the darker 
water which surrounds it, or perchance lighter 
sometimes. At this season,* when the russet 
colors prevail, the contrast of water and land is 
more agreeable to behold. What an inexpres- 
sibly soft curving line is the shore ! and if the 
water is perfectly smooth and yet rising, you 
seem to see it raised one eighth of an inch with 
swelling lip above the immediate shore it kisses, 
as in a cup. Indian isles and promontories. 
Thus we sit on that rock, hear the first wood- 
frog's croak, and dream of a russet Elysium. 
Enough for the season is the beauty thereof. 

The qualities of the land that are most attrac- 
tive to our eyes now are dryness and firmness. 
It is not the rich, black soil, but warm and 
sandy hills and plains which tempt our steps. 
We love to sit on and walk over sandy tracts in 
the spring, like cicindelas. These tongues of 
russet land capering and sloping into the flood 
do almost speak to one. They are alternately 
in sun and shade. When the cloud is passed 
and they reflect their pale brown light to me, I 
am tempted to go to them. ... In the shadow 



222 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

of a cloud, and it chances to be a hollow ring 
with sunlight in its midst, passing over the hilly 
sproutland toward the Baker house, a sprout- 
land of oaks and birches, owing to the color of 
the birch twigs, perhaps, the russet changes to 
a dark purplish tint as the cloud moves along. 
And then as I look further along eastward in 
the horizon, I am surprised to see strong pur- 
ple and violet tinges in the sun from a hillside 
a mile off, densely covered with full-grown 
birches. I would not have believed that under 
the spring sun so many colors were brought out. 
It is not the willows only that shine, but, under 
favorable circumstances, many other twigs, even 
a mile or two off. The dense birches, so far 
that their white stems are not distinct, reflect 
deep, strong purple and violet colors from the 
distant hillsides opposite to the sun. Can this 
have to do with the sap flowing in them? 

As we sit there, we see coming swift and 
straight northeast along the river valley, not 
seeing us and therefore not changing his course, 
a male goosander, so near that the green reflec- 
tions of his head and neck are plainly visible. 
He looks like a paddle-wheel steamer, so oddly 
painted, black and white and green, and moves 
along swift and straight, like one. Erelong 
the same returns with his mate, the red- 
throated, the male taking the lead. The loud 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 223 

peop (?) of a pigeon woodpecker is heard, and 
anon the prolonged loud and shrill cackle call- 
ing the thin-wooded hillsides and pastures to 
life. It is like the note of an alarm clock set 
last fall so as to wake nature up at exactly this 
date, Up up up up up up up up up/ What a 
rustling it seems to make among the dry leaves* 
. . • Then I see come slowly flying from the 
southwest a great gull, of voracious form, which 
at length, by a sudden and steep descent, alights 
in Fair Haven Pond, scaring up a crow which 
was seeking its food on the edge of the ice. 

March 24, 1842. Those authors are success- 
ful who do not write down to others, but make 
their own taste and judgment their audience. 
By some strange infatuation we forget that 
we do not approve what yet we recommend to 
others. It is enough if I please myself with 
writing ; I am there sure of all audience. 

It is always singular to meet common sense 
in the very old books, as in the ''Veeshnoo 
Sarma," as if they could have dispensed with 
the experience of later times. We had not 
given space enough to their antiquity for the 
accumulation of wisdom. We meet even a 
trivial wisdom in them as if truth were already 
hackneyed. The present is always younger 
than antiquity. A playful wisdom, which has 
eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. 



224 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

The wise can afford to doubt in his wisest 
moment. The easiness of doubt is the ground 
of his assurance. Faith keeps many doubts in 
her pay. If I could not doubt I should not 
believe. 

It is seen in the old scripture how wisdom is 
older than the talent of composition. The story 
is as slender as the thread on which pearls are 
strung; it is a spiral line growing more and 
more perplexed till it winds itself up and dies 
like the silkworm in its cocoon. It seems as 
if the old philosopher could not talk without 
moving, and each motion were made the apology 
or occasion for a sentence, but this being found 
inconvenient, the fictitious progress of the tale 
was invented. 

The great thoughts of a wise man seem to the 
vulgar who do not generalize to stand far apart 
like isolated mounts, but science knows that the 
mountains which rise so solitary in our midst 
are parts of a great mountain chain, dividing 
the earth, and the eye that looks into the hori- 
zon toward the blue Sierra melting away in the 
distance may detect their flow of thought. 
These sentences which take up your common 
life so easily are not seen to run into ridges be- 
cause they are the table-land on which the spec- 
tator stands. . . . That they stand frowning 
upon one another or mutually reflecting the 



•♦ 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 226 

sun's rays is proof enough of their common 
basis. 

The book should be found where the sentence 
is, and its connection be as inartificial. It is 
the inspiration of a day and not of a moment. 
The links should be gold also. Better that the 
good be not united than that a bad man be 
admitted into their society. When men can 
select, they will. If there be any stone in the 
quarry better than the rest they will forsake 
the rest because of it. Only the good will be 
quarried. 

March 24, 1853. In many cases I find that 
the willow cones are a mere dense cluster of 
loose leaves, suggesting that the scales of cones 
of all kinds are only modified leaves, a crowd- 
ing and stinting of the leaves, as the stem be- 
comes a thorn, and in this view those conical 
bunches of leaves of so many of the pine family 
have relation to the cones of the tree in origin 
as well as in form. The leaf, perchance, be- 
comes calyx, cone, husk, and nutshell. 

March 24, 1855. Passing up the Assabet 
by the hemlocks where there has been a slide 
and some rocks have slid down into the river, I 
think I see how rocks come to be found in the 
midst of rivers. Rivers are continually chang- 
ing their channels, eating into one bank and 
adding their sediment to the other, so that f re« 



6 

226 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

quently where there is a great bend, you see a 
high and steep bank or hill on one side which 
the river washes, and a broad meadow on the 
other. As the river eats into the hill, especially 
in freshets, it undermines the rocks, large and 
small, and they slide down alone or with the 
sand and soil to the water's edge. The river 
continues to eat into the hill, carrying away all 
the lighter parts, the sand and soil, to add to 
its meadows or islands somewhere, but leaves 
the rocks where they rested, and thus, in course 
of time, they occupy the middle of the stream, 
and later still the mud of the meadow, per- 
chance, though they may be buried under the 
mud. But this does not explain how so many 
rocks lying in streams have been split in the 
direction of the current. Again rivers appear 
to have traveled back and worn into the mead- 
ows of their own creating, and then they be- 
come more meandering than ever. Thus, in 
the course of ages, the river wriggles in its bed 
till it feels comfortable. Time is cheap and 
rather insignificant. It matters not whether it 
is a river which changes from side to side in a 
geological period, or an eel that wriggles past 
in an instant. . . . 

It is too cold to think of those signs of spring 
which I find recorded imder this date last year. 
The earliest of such signs in vegetation, noticed 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 227 

thus far, are the maple sap, the willow catkins 
and those of the poplar (not examined early), 
the celandine (J)^ grass on south banks^ and per- 
haps cowslip in sheltered places, alder catkins 
loosened, and also white mapler buds loosened. 
I am not sure that the osiers are decidedly 
brighter yet. 

March 24, 1857. If you are describing any 
occurrence or a man, make two or more distinct 
reports at different times. Though you may 
think you have said all, you will to-morrow re- 
member a whole new class of facts which per- 
haps interested most of all at the time, but did 
not present themselves to be reported. If we 
have recently met and talked with a man and 
would report our experience, we commonly 
make a very partial report at first, failing to 
seize the most significant, picturesque, and dra- 
matic points. We describe only what we have 
had time to digest and dispose of in our minds, 
without being conscious that there were other 
things really more novel and interesting to us, 
which will not fail to occur to us and impress 
us suitably at last. How little that occurs to 
us are we prepared at once to appreciate. We 
discriminate at first only a few features, and 
we need to reconsider our experience from many 
points of view and in various moods to preserve 
the whole force of it. 



228 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 24, 1858. p. m. To Fair Haven 
Pond, east side. The pond not yet open. A 
cold north-by-west wind which must have come 
over much snow and ice. The chip of the song- 
sparrow resembles that of the robin, i. e., its 
expression is the same, only fainter, and re- 
minds me that the robin's peep^ which sounds 
like a note of distress, is also a chip or call 
note to its kind. 

Returning about 5 P. M. across the Depot 
Field, I scare up from the ground a flock of 
about twenty birds which fly low, making a 
short circuit to another part of the field. At 
first they remind me of bay-wings, except that 
they are in a flock, show no white in tail, are, I 
see, a little larger, and utter a faint sveet sveet 
merely, a sort of sibilant chip. Starting them 
again, I see that they have black tails, very 
conspicuous when they pass here. They fly in 
the flock somewhat like snow buntings, occa- 
sionally one surging upward a few feet in pur- 
suit of another, and they alight about where 
they first were. It is almost impossible to dis- 
tinguish them upon the ground, they squat so 
flat, and so much resemble it, running amid the 
stubble. But at length I stand within two rods 
of one and get a good view of its markings with 
my glass. They are the Alauda alpestris or 
shore lark, a quite sizable and handsome bird. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 229 

A delicate, pale, lemon -yellow line above, with 
a dark line through the eye. The yellow again 
on the sides of the neck and on the throat, with 
a buff-ash breast and reddish brown tinges. 
Beneath, white. Above, rusty brown behind, 
and darker, ash or slate with purplish brown 
reflections, forward. Legs black. Bill blue 
and black. Common to the old and new world. 
March 24, 1859. Now when the leaves get 
to be dry and rustle under your feet, the pecu- 
liar dry note vmrrk wurrh yyur r r k wurk^ of 
the wood-frog is heard faintly by ears on the 
alert, borne up from some unseen pool in a 
woodland hollow which is open to the influences 
of the sun. It is a singular soimd for awaken- 
ing nature to make, associated with the first 
wai*mer days when you sit in some sheltered 
place in the woods amid the dried 1 saves. 
How moderate on her first awakening, how lit- 
tle demonstrative I You may sit half an hour 
before you will hear another. You doubt if 
the season will be long enough for such oriental 
and luxurious slowness. But they get on nev- 
ertheless, and by to-morrow or in a day or two 
they croak louder and more frequently. Can 
you be sure that you have heard the very first 
wood-frog in the township croak? Ah, how 
weather-wise must he be ! There is no guessing 
at the weather with him. He makes the 



230 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

weather in his degree, he encourages it to be 
mild. The weather, what is it but the tempera- 
ment of the earth? and he is wholly of the 
earth, sensitive as its skin in which he lives, 
and of which he is a part. His life relaxes 
with the thawing ground. He pitches and 
tunes his voice to chord with the rustling leaves 
which the March wind has dried. Long before 
the frost is quite out he feels the influence of 
the spring rains and the warmer days. His is 
the very voice of the weather. He rises and 
falls like quicksilver in the thermometer. You 
do not perceive the spring so surely in the 
actions of men, their lives are so artificial. 
They may make more or less fire in their par- 
lors, and their feelings accordingly are not good 
thermometers. The frog far away in the wood, 
that bums no coal nor wood, perceives more 
surely the general and universal changes. 

There sits on the bank of the ditch a Sana 
fontinalia. He is mainly a bronze brown, with 
a very dark greenish snout, etc. ; with thq 
raised line down the side of the back. This, 
methinks, is about the only frog which the 
marsh hawk could have found hitherto. 

March 25, 1842. Great persons are not soon 
learned, not even their outlines, but they change 
like the mountains in the horizon as we ride 
along. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 231 

Comparatively speaking, I care not for the 
man or his designs who would make the high- 
est use of me short of an all adventuring friend- 
ship. I wish by the behavior of my friend 
toward me to be led to have such regard for 
myself as for a box of precious ointment. I 
shall not be as cheap to myself if I see that 
another values me. 

We talk much about education, and yet none 
will assume the office of an educator. I never 
gave any one the whole advantage of myself. 
I never afforded him the culture of my love. 
How can I talk of charity who at last withhold 
the kindness which alone makes charity desira- 
ble. The poor want nothing less than me my- 
self, and I shirk charity by giving rags and 
meat. What can I give or what deny to an- 
other but myself? 

That person who alone can understand you 
you cannot get out of your mind. 

The artist must work with indifferency. Too 
great interest vitiates his work. 

March 25, 1858. p. m. I see many fox- 
colored sparrows flitting past in a straggling 
manner into the birch and pine woods on the 
left, and hear a sweet warble there from time 
to time. They are busily scratching like hens 
amid the dry leaves of that wood (not swampy), 
from time to time the rearmost moving forward 



232 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

one or two at a time, while a few are perched 
here and there on the lower branches of a birch 
or other tree, and I hear a very low and sweet 
whistling strain, commonly half-finished, from 
one every two or three minutes. 

You might frequently say of a poet away 
from home that he was as mute as a bird of 
passage, uttering a mere chip from time to time, 
but follow him to his true habitat, and you 
shall not know him, he will sing so melodiously. 

March 25, 1859. A score of my townsmen 
have been shooting and trapping musquash and 
mink of late. They are gone all day; early 
and late they scan the rising tide; stealthily 
they set their traps in remoteLami.;, avoiding 
one another. Am not I a trapper, too? early 
and late scanning the rising flood, ranging by 
distant woodsides, setting my traps in solitude, 
and baiting them as well as I know how, that I 
may catch life and light, that my intellectual 
part may taste some venison and be invigorated, 
that my nakedness may be clad in some wild 
June warmth? 

As to the color of spring, I should say that 
hitherto in dry weather it was fawn-colored; 
in wet, more yellowish or tawny. When wet, 
the green of the fawn is supplied by the lichens 
and the mosses. 

March 26, 1842. I thank God that the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 233 

cheapness which appears in time and the world, 
the triviahiess of the whole scheme of things, is 
in my own cheap and trivial moment. I am 
time and the world. In me are summer and 
winter, village life, and commercial routine, 
pestilence and famine, and refreshing breezes, 
joy and sadness, life and death. 

I must confess I have felt mean enough when 
asked how I was to act on society, what errand 
I had to mankind. Undoubtedly I did not feel 
mean without a reason, and yet my loitering is 
not without a defense. I would fain communi- 
cate the wealth of my life to men, would really 
give them what is most precious in my gift. I 
would secrete pearls with the shellfish and lay 
up honey with the bees for them. I will sift 
the sunbeams for the public good. I know no 
riches I would keep back. I have no private 
good unless it be my peculiar ability to serve 
the public. This is the only individual prop- 
erty. Each one may thus be innocently rich. 
I inclose and foster the pearl till it is grown. 
I wish to connnunicate those parts of my life 
which I would gladly live again. 

It is hard to be a good citizen of the world in 
any great sense, but if we do render no interest 
or increase to mankind out of that talent God 
gave us, we can at least preserve the principal 
unimpaired. 



234 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

In such a letter as I like there will be tlie 
most naked and direct speech, the least ciream- 
location* 

March 26, 1853. Up the Assabet, scared 
from his perch a stout hawk, the red-tailed, 
nndonbtedl J, for I saw Terj plainly the cow-red 
when he spread his wings frcnn off his tail (and 
romp?). I rowed the boat three times within 
gunshot before he flew, twice within four rods, 
while he sat on an oak over the water; I think 
because I had two ladies with me, which was as 
good as bushing the boat. He was an interest- 
ing, eagle-like object as he sat upright on his 
perch with his back to us, now and then look- 
ing over his shoulder, the broad-backed, flat- 
headed, curve-beaked bird. 

March 26, 1855. 6 a. m. Still cold and 
blustering. I see a muskrat house just erected, 
two feet or more above the water, and sharp. 
At the Hubbard Path a mink comes tetering 
along the ice by the side of the river. I am 
between him and the sun, and he does not 
notice me. He seems daintily lifting his feet 
with a jerk as if his toes were sore. They seem 
to go a-hunting at night along the edge of the 
river. Perhaps I notice them more at this sea- 
son, when the shallow water freezes at night, 
and there is no vegetation along the shore to 
conceal them. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 235 

The lark sings perched on the top of an apple- 
tree, seel-yah sed-yah^ and then perhaps sed- 
yah-see-e^ and several other strains quite sweet 
and plaintive, contrasting with the cheerless 
season and the bleak meadow. Farther off I 
hear one with notes like ah'tick-sed-yah, 

p. M. Sail down to the Great Meadows. A 
strong wind with snow driving from the west 
and thickening the air. The farmers pause to 
see me scud before it. At last I land and walk 
further down on the meadow bank. ... I 
notice the paths made by the muskrats when 
the water was high in the winter, leading from 
the river up the bank to a bed of grass, above 
or below the surface. When it runs under the 
surface I frequently slump into it, and can trace 
it to the bed by the hollow sound when I stamp 
. on the frozen ground. They have disfigured 
the banks very much in some places the past 
winter. Clams have been carried into these 
galleries a rod or more under the earth. When 
the ice still remained thick over the galleries, 
after the water had gone down, they kept on 
the surface and terminated, perhaps, at some 
stump where the earth was a little raised. 

March 26, 1856. The Eomans introduced 
husbandry into England where but little was 
practiced before, and the English have intro- 
duced it into America. So we may well read 



236 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

the Roman authors for a history of this art as 
practiced by us. 

I am sometimes affected by the consideration 
that a man may spend the whole of his life after 
boyhood in accomplishing a particular design, 
as if he were put to a special and petty use, 
without taking time to look around him and 
appreciate the phenomenon of his existence. 
If so many purposes are thus necessarily left 
unaccomplished, perhaps unthought of, we are 
reminded of the transient interest we have in 
this life. Our interest in our coimtry, the 
spread of liberty, etc., strong, and, as it were, 
innate as it is, cannot be as transient as our 
present existence here. It cannot be that all 
those patriots who die in the midst of their 
career have no further connection with the ca- 
reer of their country. 

March 26, 1857. As I lay on the fine dry 
sedge in the sim in a deep and sheltered hollow, 
I heard one fine, faint peep from over the windy 
ridge between the hollow in which I lay and 
the swamp, which at first I referred to a bird, 
and looked round at the bushes which crowned 
the brim of this hollow to find it, but erelong 
a regularly but faintly repeated /jAe, pAe, pAc, 
pAe, revealed the Hylodes PicheringiL It was 
like the light reflected from the mountain ridges 
within the shaded portion of the moon, forerun- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 237 

ner and herald of the spring. You take your 
walk some pretty cold and windy, but sunny, 
March day through rustling woods, perhaps, 
glad to take shelter in the hollows or on the 
south side of hills or woods. When ensconced 
in some sunny and sheltered hoUow with some 
just-melted pool at its bottom, as you recline 
on the fine withered sedge in which the mice 
have had their galleries, leaving it pierced 
with countless holes, and are, perchance, dream- 
ing of spring there, a single dry hard croak, 
like a grating twig, comes up from the pool. 
Where there is a small, smooth surface of 
melted ice bathing the bare button bushes, or 
water andromeda, or tufts of sedge, such is the 
earliest voice of the liquid pools, hard and dry 
and grating. Unless you watch long and 
closely, not a ripple nor a bubble will be seen, 
and a marsh hawk will have to look long to find 
one. The notes of the croaking frog and the 
hylodes are not only contemporary with, but 
analogous to, the blossom of the skunk-cabbage 
and white maple. 

March 26, 1860. This dry, whitish, tawny 
or drab color of the fields, withered grass lit by 
the Sim, is the color of a teamster's coat. It 
is one of the most interesting effects of light 
now, when the sun, coming out of clouds, shines 
brightly on it. It is theybre-glow of the year. 



238 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

There is certainly a singular propriety in that 
color for the coat of a farmer or teamster, a 
hunter or shepherd, who is required to be much 
abroad in our landscape at this season. It is 
in harmony with nature, and you are less con- 
spicuous in the fields and can get nearer wild 
animals for it. For this reason I am the better 
satisfied with the color of my hat, a drab, than 
with that of my companion, which is black, 
though his coat is of the exact tint, and better 
than mine. But, again, my dusty boots harmo- 
nize better with the landscape than his black 
and glossy India-rubbers. I had a suit once in 
which, methinks, I could glide across the fields 
unperceived half a mile in front of a farmer's 
windows. It was such a skillful mixture of 
browns, dark and light, properly proportioned, 
with even some threads of green .in it, by 
chance. It was of loose texture and about the 
color of a pasture with patches of withered 
sweet fern and lechea. I trusted a good deal 
to my invisibility in it when going across lots, 
and many a time I was aware that to it I owed 
the near approach of wild animals. 

No doubt my dusty and tawny cowhides sur- 
prise the street walkers who wear patent-leather 
congress shoes, but they do not consider how 
absurd such shoes would be in my vocation, to 
thread the woods and swamps in. C was 



. EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 239 

saying properly enough the other day, as we 
were making our way through a dense patch of 
shrub oak, ^^I suppose that those villagers think 
we wear these old, worn hats with holes all 
along the corners for oddity; but Coombs, the 
musquash himter and partridge and rabbit 
snarer, knows better. He imderstands us. He 
knows that a new and square-cornered hat 
would be spoiled in one excursion through the 
shrub oaks." When a citizen comes to take a 
walk with me, I commonly find that he is lame 
and disabled by his shoeing. He is sure to wet 
his feet, tear his coat, and jam his hat, and the 
superior qualities of my boots, coat, and hat 
appear. I once went into the woods with a 
party for a fortnight. I wore my old and com- 
mon clothes, which were of Vermont gray. 
They wore, no doubt, the best they had for 
such an occasion, of a fashionable color and 
quality. I thought that they were a little 
ashamed of me while we were in the towns. 
They all tore their clothes badly but myself, and 
I, who, it chanced, was the only one provided 
with needles and thread, enabled them to mend 
them. When we came out of the woods I was 
the best dressed of the party. 

One of the most interesting sights this p. M. 
is the color of the yellow sand in the sun at the 
bottom of Nut Meadow and Second Division 



240 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

brooks. The yellow sands of a lonely brook, 
seen through the rippling water, with the shad- 
ows of the ripples like films passing over it. 

Tried by various tests this season fluctuates. 
Thus the skunk-cabbage may flower March 2, 
as in 1860, or not till April 6 or 8, as in 1854 
and 1855, a variation of about thirty-six days. 

The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in 
1850, 1857, and 1860, or not till March 24, as 
in 1856, a variation of about twenty-eight days. 

The yellow-spotted tortoise may be seen Feb- 
ruary 23, as in 1857, or not till March 28, as 
in 1855, a variation of thirty-three days. 

The wood-frog may be heard March 15, as 
this year, or not till April 13, as in 1856, a 
variation of twenty-nine days. 

Thus tried by these four tests, March fluctu- 
ates about a month, receding into February or 
advancing into April. 

March 27, 1840. Think how finite, after 
aU, the known world is. Money coined at 
Philadelphia is a legal tender over how much 
of it. You may carry ship-biscuit, beef, and 
pork quite round to the place you set out from. 
England sends her felons to the other side for 
safe-keeping and convenience. 

March 27, 1841. Magnanimity, though it 
look expensive for a short course, is always 
economy in the long nm. To make up a great 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 241 

action there are no subordinate mean ones. 
We can never afford to postpone a true life to- 
day to any future and anticipated nobleness. 
We think if by tight economy we can manage 
to arrive at independence, then indeed we will 
begin to be generous without stay. We sacri- 
fice all nobleness to a little present meanness. 
If a man charge you $800 pay him $850, and it 
will leave a clean edge to the sum. It will be 
like nature, overflowing and rounded like the 
bank of a river, not close and precise like a 
bank or ditch. 

It is always a short step to peace of mind. 

I must not lose any of my freedom by being 
a farmer and landholder. Most who enter on 
any profession are doomed men. The world 
might as well sing a dirge over them forthwith. 
The farmer's muscles are rigid; he can do one 
thing long, not many well. His pace seems 
determined henceforth. He never quickens it. 
A very rigid Nemesis is his fate. When the 
right wind blows, or a star calls, I can leave 
this arable and grass ground without making a 
will or settling my estate. I would buy a farm 
as freely as a silken streamer. Let me not 
think my front windows must face east hence- 
forth because a particular hill slopes that way. 
My life must undulate still. I will not feel 
that my wings are clipped when once I have 



242 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

settled on ground which the law calls my own, 
but find new pinions grown to the old, and tala- 
ria to my feet beside. 

Sunday^ March 27, 1842. The eye must 
be firmly anchored to this earth which beholds 
birches and pines waving in the breeze in a cer- 
tain light, a serene, rippling light. 

Cliffs. The little hawks have just come out 
to play, like butterflies rising one above the 
other in endless alternation, far below me. 
They swoop from side to side in the broad 
basin of the tree-tops, with wider and wider 
surges, as if swung by an invisible pendulum. 
They stoop down on this side and scale up on 
that. Suddenly I look up and see a new bird, 
probably an eagle, quite above me, laboring 
with the wind not more than forty rods off. It 
was the largest bird of the falcon kind I ever 
saw. I was never so impressed by any flight. 
She sailed the air, and fell back from time to 
time like a ship on her beam-ends, holding her 
talons up as if ready for the arrows. I never 
allowed before for the grotesque attitude of our 
national bird. The eagle must have an edu- 
cated eye. 

See what a life the gods have given us, set 
round with pain and pleasure. It is too 
strange for sorrow, it is too strange for joy. 
One while it looks as shallow, though as intri- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 243 

cate, as a Cretan labyrintli, and again it is a 
pathless depth. I ask for bread incessantly, 
that my life sustain me as much as meat my 
body. No man knoweth in what hour his life 
may come. Say not that Nature is trivial, for 
to-morrow she will be radiant with beauty. 

March 27, 1853. . . . p. M. To Martial 
Miles's. . . . The hazel is fully out. The 
23d was perhaps fuU early to date them. It is 
in some respects the most interesting flower yet, 
though so minute that only an observer of na- 
ture, or one who looked carefully, would notice 
it. It is the most highly and richly colored 
yet, ten or a dozen little rays at the end of the 
buds, which are at the ends and along the sides 
of the bare stems. Some of the flowers are a 
light, some a dark crimson. The high color 
of this minute, unobserved flower at this cold, 
leafless, and almost flowerless season! It is a 
beautiful greeting of the spring, when the cat- 
kins are scarcely relaxed and there are no signs 
of life in the bush. Moreover, they are so 
tender that I never get one home in good con- 
dition. They wilt and turn black. 

Tried to see the faint-croaking frogs at J. P. 
Brown's pond in the woods. They are remark- 
ably timid and shy; had their noses and eyes 
out, croaking, but all ceased, dived, and con- 
cealed themselves, before I got within a rod of 



244 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

the shore. Stood perfectly still amid the bushes 
on the shore before one showed himself; finally 
five or six. All eyed me and gradually ap- 
proached me within three feet to reconnoitre. 
Though I waited about half an hour, they would 
not utter a sound nor take their eyes off me, 
plainly affected by curiosity. Dark brown, and 
some, perhaps, dark green, about two inches 
long. Had their noses and eyes out when they 
croaked. If described at all, they must be either 
young of Rana pipiens or Rana palustris. 

March 27, 1857. ... I would fain make 
two reports in my journal: first, the incidents 
and observations of to-day, and by to-morrow 
I review the same and record what was omitted 
before, which will often be the most significant 
and poetic part. I do not know at first what 
it is that charms me. The men and things of 
to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to- 
morrow's memory. 

Men talk to me about society, as if I had 
none and they had some, as if it were only to 
be got by going to the sociable or to Boston. 

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my 
contempt by the pretension they imply, for who 
is he that assumes to flatter me? To compli- 
ment often implies an assimiption of superiority 
in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle 
detraction. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 245 

March 27, 1858. p. M. Sail to Bittern 
Cliff. Scare up a flock of sheldrakes just off 
Fair Haven HiU, the conspicuous white ducks, 
sailing straight hither and thither. • . • Soon 
after, we scare up a flock of black ducks. We 
land and steal over the hill through the woods, 
expecting to find them under Lee's Cliff, as 
indeed we do, having crawled over the hill 
through the woods on our stomachs. There we 
watched various waterfowl for an hour. There 
are a dozen sheldrakes (or goosanders), and 
among them four or five females. They are 
now pairing. I should say one or two pairs are 
made. At first we see only a male and female 
quite on the alert, some way out on the pond, 
tacking bax^k and forth, and looking every way. 
They keep close together, headed one way, and 
when one turns the other also turns quickly. 
The male appears to take the lead. Soon the 
rest appear, sailing out from the shore into 
sight. We hear a squeaking note as if made 
by a pump, and presently see four or five great 
herring gulls wheeling about. Sometimes they 
make a sound like the scream of a hen-hawk. 
They are shaped somewhat like a very thick 
white rolling-pin sharpened at both ends. At 
length they alight near the ducks. The shel- 
drakes at length acquire confidence, come close 
in shore, and go to preening themselves. . . . 



246 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

They are all busy about it at once. . . . 
Among them, or near by, I at length detect 
three or four whistlers by their wanting the red 
bill, being considerably smaller and less white, 
having a white spot on the head, a black back, 
and altogether less white. They also keep more 
or less apart and do not dive when the rest do. 
... At length I detect two little dippers, as I 
have called them, though I am not sure that I 
have ever seen the male before. They are male 
and female. . . . They are incessantly diving 
close to the button bushes. The female is ap- 
parently uniformly black, another, dark brown, 
but the male has a conspicuous crest. Appar- 
ently white on the hind head, with a white 
breast and white line on the lower sides of the 
neck; that is, the head and breast are black 
and white conspicuously. 

The sheldrake has a peculiar long clipper 
look, often moving rapidly straight forward 
over the water. It sinks to very various 
depths, sometimes, as when apparently alarmed, 
showing only its head and neck and the upper 
part of its back, and at others, when at ease, 
floating buoyantly on the surface, as if it had 
taken in more air, showing all its white breast 
and the white along its sides. Sometimes it 
lifts itself up on the surface and flaps its wings, 
revealing its whole rosaceous breast and its 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 247 

lower parts, looking in form like a penguin. 
... It was a pretty sight to see a pair of them 
tacking about, always within a foot or two of 
each other, heading the same way, now on this 
short tack, now on that, the male taking the 
lead, sinking deep and looking every way. 
When the whole twelve had come together they 
would soon break up again, and were contin- 
ually changing their ground, though not diving, 
now sailing slowly this way a dozen rods, and 
now that, and now coming in near the shore. 
Then they would all go to preening themselves, 
thrusting their bills into their backs, and keep- 
ing up such a brisk motion that you could not 
get a fair sight of one's head. From time to 
t;me you heard a slight note of alarm, or per- 
haps a breeding note, for they were evidently 
selecting their mates. Then it was surprising 
to see how, briskly sailing off one side, they 
went to diving, as if they had suddenly come 
across a school of minnows. A whole company 
would disappear at once. .... Now for nearly 
a minute there is not a feather to be seen, and 
then next minute you see a party of half a 
dozen there chasing one another and making 
the water fly far and wide. 

March 27, 1859. ... It is remarkable how 
modest and unobtrusive these early flowers are. 
The musquash and duck hun*;;ji dr the farmer 



248 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

might, and do, commonly pass by them without 
perceiving them. They steal into the air and 
light of spring without being noticed for the 
most part. The sportsman seems to see a mass 
of weather-stained dead twigs, whose wood is 
exposed here and there, but, nearer, the spots 
are recognized for the pretty bright buttons of 
the willow; and the flowers of the alder (now 
partly in bloom) look like masses of bare, bar- 
ren twigs, last year's twigs, and would be taken 
for such. 

March 28, 1842. How often must one feel, 
as he looks back on his past life, that he has 
gained a talent, but lost a character. My life 
has got down into my fingers. My inspiration 
at length is only so much breath as 1 can 
breathe. Society affects to estimate men by 
their talents, but really feels and knows them 
by their character. What a man does, com- 
pared with what he is, is but a small part. To 
require that our friend possess a certain skill 
is not to be satisfied till he is something less 
than our friend. Friendship should be a great 
promise, a perennial springtime. I can conceive 
how the life of the gods may be dull and tame, 
if it is not disappointed and insatiate. One 
may well feel chagrined when he finds he can 
do nearly all he can conceive. How poor is 
the life of the best and wisest; the petty side 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 249 

will appear at last. Understand once how the 
best in society live, with what routine, with 
what tedium and insipidity, with what grinmess 
and defiance, with what chuckling over an ex- 
aggeration of the sunshine! I am astonished, 
I must confess, that man looks so respectable 
in nature, that, considering the littlenesses 
Socrates must descend to in the twenty-four 
hours, he yet wears a serene countenance and 
even adorns nature. 

March 28, 1852. lOJ p. M. The geese have 
just gone over, making a great cackling and 
awaking people in their beds. They will prob- 
ably settle in the river. 

March 28, 1853. asked me to read the 

Life of Dr. Chalmers, which, however, I did 
not promise to do. Yesterday, Sunday, she 
was heard, through the partition, shouting to 

, who is deaf, "Think of it, he stood half 

an hour to-day to hear the frogs croak, and he 
would n't read the Life of Chalmers ! " 

6 A. M. To Cliffs. . . . The woods ring 
with the cheerful jingle of the Fringilla hte- 
mails. This is a very trig and compact little 
bird, and appears to be in good condition. 
The straight edge of slate on their breasts con- 
trasts remarkably with the white from beneath. 
The short, light-colored bill is also very con- 
spicuous amid the dark slate, and when they fly 



250 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

from you, the two white feathers in their tails 
are very distinct at a good distance. They are 
very lively, pursuing each other from bush to 
bush. 

p. M. To Assabet. Saw eleven black ducks 
near the bathing-place in the Assabet, flying 
up stream. Came within three or four rods of 
me, then wheeled and went down. Their faint 
quack sounded much like the croak of the frogs 
occasionally heard now in the pools. As they 
wheeled and went off they made a very fine 
whistling sound, which yet, I think, was not 
made by their wings. 

I saw flying to the alders by the river what 
I have no doubt was the tree-sparrow, with a 
ferruginous crown or head, and wings also 
partly ferruginous; light beneath. It was in 
company with a few of the Fringilla hiemalis. 
Sang sweetly, much like some notes of the 
canary. One pursued another. It was not 
large enough for the fox-colored sparrow. Per- 
haps I have seen it before within the month. 

As near as I can make out, the hawks or 
falcons I am likely to see here are the American 
Sparrow Hawk, the Fish Hawk, the Goshawk, 
the Short-winged Buzzard (if this is the same 
with Browne's stuffed sharp-shinned or slate- 
colored hawk, not slate in his specimen). Is 
not this the common small hawk that soars? 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 251 

The Red-tailed Hawk. (Have we the red- 
shouldered hawk, about the same size and 
aspect with the last?) The Hen Harrier. I 
suppose it is the adult of this, with the slate 
color, over meadows. 

March 28, 1855. K m. To Cliffs, along 
river. ... I run about these cold, blustering 
days, on the whole, perhaps, the worst to bear 
in the year (partly because they disappoint ex- 
pectation), looking almost in vain for some ani- 
mal or vegetable life stirring. The warmest 
springs hardly allow me the glimpse of a frog's 
heel as he settles himself in the mud, and I 
think I am lucky if I see one winter-defying 
hawk or a hardy duck or two at a distance on 
the water. As for the singing of birds, the few 
that have come to us, it is too cold for them to 
sing and for me to hear. The bluebird's war- 
ble comes feeble and frozen to my ear. . . . 

Over a great many acres the meadows have 
been cut up into neat squares and other figures 
by the ice of February, as if ready to be re- 
moved; sometimes separated by narrow and 
deep channels like muskrat paths, but oftener 
the edges have been raised and apparently 
stretched, and settling have not fallen into their 
places exactly, but lodged on their neighbors. 
Even yet you see cakes of ice surmounted by a 
shell of meadow-crust which has preserved them, 
while all around is bare meadow. 



252 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 28, 1856. I think to say to my friend. 
There is but one interval between us. You are 
on one side of it, I on the other. You know as 
much about it as I, how wide, how impassable 
it is. I will endeavor not to blame you. Do 
not blame me. There is nothing to be said 
about it. Recognize the truth, and pass over 
the intervals that are bridged. 

Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this 
side the mountains, yours to that. For a long 
time you have appeared fuii;her and further off 
to me. I see that you will at length disappear 
altogether. For a season my path seems lonely 
without you. The meadows are like barren 
ground. The memory of me is steadily passing 
away from you. My path grows narrower and 
steeper, and the night is approaching. Yet I 
have faith that in the infinite future new suns 
will rise and new plains expand before me, and 
I trust I shall therein encounter pilgrims who 
bear that same virtue that I recognized in you, 
who will be that very virtue that was you. I 
accept the everlasting and salutary law which 
was promulgated as much that spring when I 
first knew you, as this when I seem to leave 
you. 

My former friends, I visit you as one walks 
amid the columns of a ruined temple ; you be- 
long to an era, a civilization and glory, long 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 253 

past. I recognize still your fair proportions, 
notwithstanding the convulsions we have felt, 
and the weeds and jackals that have sprung up 
around. I come here to be reminded of the 
past, to read your inscriptions, the hieroglyphics, 
the sacred writings. We are no longer the rep- 
resentatives of our former selves. 

Love is a thirst that is never slaked. Under 
the coarsest rind the sweetest meat. If you 
would read a friend aright you must be able to 
read through something thicker and opaquer 
than horn. If you can read a friend, all lan- 
guages will be easy to you. Enemies publish 
themselves. They declare war. The friend 
never declares his love. 

March 28, 1857. At Lee's CliflF and this 
side, I see half a dozen buff-edged butterflies, 
Vanessa antiopa^ and pick up three dead or 
dying, — two together, the edges of their wings 
gone. Several are fluttering over the dry rock 
debris under the cliff, in whose crevices proba- 
bly they have wintered. Two of the three I 
pick up are not dead, though they will not fly. 
Verily their day is a short one. What has 
checked their frail life ? Within, the buff edge 
is black with bright sky-blue spots. Those lit- 
tle oblong spots on the black ground are light 
as you look directly down on them, but from 
one side they change through violet to a crys- 



254 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

talline rose purple. . . . The broad buff edge 
of the Vanessa antiopa^s wings harmonizes with 
the russet ground it flutters over, and as it 
stands concealed in the winter with its wings 
folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, 
the gray-brown underside of its wings prevents 
its being distinguished from the rocks them- 
selves. 

When I witness the first ploughing and plant- 
ing I acquire a long- lost confidence in the earth, 
that it will nourish the seed that is committed 
to its bosom. I am surprised to be reminded 
that there is warmth in it. We have not only 
warmer skies then, but a warmer earth. The 
frost is out of it and we may safely commit 
these seeds to it in some places. 

Yesterday I walked with a farmer beside his 
team and saw one furrow turned quite round 
his field. What noble work is ploughing, with 
the broad and solid earth for material, the ox 
for fellow-laborer, and the simple but efficient 
plough for tool. Work that is not done in any 
shop, in a cramped position, work that tells, 
that concerns all men, which the sun shines and 
the rain falls on, and the birds sing over. 
You turn over the whole vegetable mould, ex- 
pose how many grubs, and put a new aspect on 
the face of the earth. It comes pretty near to 
making a world; redeeming a swamp does, at 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 255 

any rate. A good ploughman Is a terroe filius. 
A ploughman, we all know, whistles as he 
drives his team afield. 

Often I can give the truest and most interest- 
ing account of any adventure I have had after 
years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, 
only the most significant facts surviving in my 
memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest 
me after such a lapse of time is sure to be per- 
tinent, and I may safely record all that I re- 
member. 

March 28, 1858. I notice the hazel stigmas 
in a warm hollow just beginning to peep forth. 
This is an unobserved, but very pretty and in- 
teresting evidence of the progress of the season. 
I should not have noticed it, if I had not care- 
fully examined the fertile buds. It is like a 
crimson star first dimly detected in the twilight. 
The warmth of the day in this sunny hollow 
above the withered sedge has caused the stigmas 
to show their lips through the scaly shield. 
They do not project more than the thirtieth of 
an inch. Some not the sixtieth. The stami- 
nate catkins are also considerably loosened. 
Just as the turtles put forth their heads, so 
these put forth their stigmas in the spring. 
How many accurate thermometers there are on 
every hill and in every valley! Measure the 
length of the hazel stigmas and you can tell 



256 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

how much warmth there has been this spring. 
How fitly and exactly any season of the year 
may be described by indicating the condition of 
some flower. 

It is surprising that men can be divided into 
those who lead an indoor and those who lead 
an outdoor life, as if birds and quadrupeds 
were to be divided into those that lived a 
within-nest or burrow life, and those that lived 
without their nests and holes chiefly. How 
many of our troubles are house-bred ! He lives 
an outdoor life, i. 6., he is not squatted behind 
a door. It is such a questionable phrase as an 
"honest man," or the "naked eye," as if the 
eye which is not covered with a spy-glass 
should properly be called naked. 

March 28, 1859. p. m. Paddle to the Bed- 
ford line. It is now high time to look for 
arrowheads, etc. I spend many hours every 
spring gathering the crop which the melting 
snow and rain have washed bare. When at 
length some island in the meadow or some 
sandy field elsewhere has been ploughed, perhaps 
for rye, in the fall, I take note of it, and do 
not fail to repair thither as soon as the earth 
begins to be dry in the spring. If the spot 
chances never to have been cultivated before, 
I am the first to gather a crop from it. The 
farmer little thinks that another reaps a har- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 267 

vest which is the fruit of his toil. As much 
ground is turned up in a day by the plough as 
Indian implements could not have turned over 
in a month, and my eyes rest on the evidences 
of an aboriginal life which passed here a thou- 
sand years ago, perchance. Especially if the 
knolls in the meadows are washed by a freshet 
where they have been ploughed the previous fall, 
the soil will be taken away lower down and the 
stones left, the arrowheads, etc., and soapstone 
pottery amid them, somewhat as gold is washed 
in a dish or tom. I landed on two spots this 
p. M. and picked up a dozen arrowheads. It is 
one of the regular pursuits of the spring. As 
sportsmen go in pursuit of duck and musquash, 
and scholars of rare books, and travelers of 
adventures, and poets of ideas, and all men of 
money, I go in search of arrowheads when the 
season comes round again. So I help myself 
to live worthily, loving my life as I should. It 
is a good collyrium to look on the bare earth, 
to pore over it so much, getting strength to 
all your senses, like Antaeus. You can hardly 
name a more innocent or wholesome entertain- 
ment. As I am thus engaged I hear the rum- 
ble of the bowling-alley's thunder, which has 
begun again in the village. It comes before 
the earliest natural thunder. But what its 
lightning is, and what atmospheres it purifies, 



258 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

I do not know. ... I have not decided 
whether I had better publish my experience in 
searching for arrowheads in three volumes with 
plates, or try to compress it into one. These 
durable implements seem to have been suggested 
to the Indian mechanic with a view to my en- 
tertainment in a succeeding period. After all 
the labor expended on it, the bolt may have 
been shot but once, perchance, and the shaft, 
once attached to it, decayed, and there lay the 
arrowhead, sinking into the ground, awaiting 
me. They lie all over the hills with like ex- 
pectation, and in due time the husbandman is 
sent, and, tempted by the promise of corn or 
rye, he ploughs the land and turns them up to 
my view. Many as I have found, methinks the 
last one gave me about the same delight that 
the first did. Some time or* other, you would 
say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all 
over the surface of America. You may have 
your peculiar tastes; certain localities in your 
town may seem from association unattractive 
and uninhabitable to you; you may wonder that 
the land bears any money value there, and pity 
some poor fellow who is said to survive in that 
neighborhood ; but plough up a new field there, 
and you will find the omnipresent arrow point 
strewn over it, and it will appear that the red 
man with other tastes and associations lived 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 259 

there too. No matter how far from the modem 
road or meeting-house, no matter how near. 
They lie in the meeting-house cellar, and they 
lie in the distant cow-pasture. Some collec- 
tions which were made a century ago by the 
curious like myself have been dispersed again, 
and they are still as good as new. You cannot 
tell the third-hand ones (for they are all second- 
hand) from the others, such is their persistent 
out-of-doors durability. They were chiefly 
made to be lost. They are sown like a grain 
that is slow to germinate, broadcast over the 
earth. As the dragon's teeth bore a crop of 
soldiers, so these bear crops of philosophers 
and poets, and the same seed is just as good to 
plant again. It is a stone fruit. Each one 
yields me a thought. I come nearer to the 
maker of it than if I found his bones. They 
would not prove any art that wielded them, such 
as this work of his bones does. It is humanity 
inscribed on the face of the earth,^ patent to my 
eyes as soon as the snow is off, not hidden away 
in some crypt or grave, or under a pyramid. 
No disgusting mummy, but a clean stone, the 
best symbol or letter that could have been 
transmitted to me. The red man, his mark! 

At every step I see it. . . . It is 
no single inscription on a particu- 
lar rock, but a footprint or rather a mindprint 




260 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

left everywhere and altogether illegible. No 
Vandals, however vandalie in their disposition, 
can be so industrious as to destroy them. . . . 
They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil 
thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind 
that shaped them. I would fain know that I 
am treading in the traxjks of human game, that 
I am on the trail of mind. . . . When I see 
these signs I know that the subtle spirits that 
made them are not far off, into whatever form 
transmuted. What if you do plough and hoe 
amid them, and swear that not one stone shall 
be left upon another, they are only the less 
likely to break in that case. When you turn 
up one layer you bury another so much the 
more securely. They are at peace with rust. 
This arrowheaded character promises to out- 
last aU others. The larger pestles and axes 
may perchance be broken and grow scarce, but 
the arrowhead shall perhaps never cease to wing 
its way through the ages to eternity, . . . 
When some Vandal chieftain has razed to earth 
the British Museum, and perchance the winged 
bulls of Nineveh shall have lost most, if not all, 
of their features, the arrowheads which the 
museum contains may find themselves at home 
again in familiar dust, and resume their shining 
in new springs upon the bared surface of the 
earth, to be picked up for the thousandth time 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 261 

by the shepherd or savage that may be wander- 
ing there, and once more suggest their story to 
him. . . . They cannot be said to be lost or 
found. Surely their use was not so much to 
bear its fate to some bird or quadruped, or 
man, as it was to lie here near the surface of 
the earth for a perpetual reminder to the gener- 
ations that come after. . . . As for museums, 
I think it is better to let nature take care of 
our antiquities. These are our antiquities, and 
they are cleaner to think of than the rubbish of 
the Tower of London, and they are a more an- 
cient armor than is there. It is a recommenda- 
tion that they are so inobvious that they occur 
only to the eye and thought that chances to be 
directed toward them. 

When you pick up an arrowhead and put it 
in your pocket, it may say, "Eh, you think you 
have got me, do you? But I shaU wear a hole 
in your pocket at last, or if you put me in your 
cabinet, your heir or great-grandson wiU forget 
me, or throw me out of the window directly, or 
when the house falls I shall drop into the cel- 
lar, and then I shall be quite at home again, 
ready to be found again. Perhaps some new 
red man, that is to come, will fit me to a shaft 
and make me do his bidding for a bow shot; 
what reck I?" 

The meadows, which are still covered far 



262 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

and wide, are quite alive with black ducks. 
When walking about on the low eastern shore 
at the Bedford bound, I heard a faint honk, 
and looked around near the water with my 
glass, thinking it came from that side or per- 
haps from a farm-yard in that direction. I 
soon heard it again, and at last we detected a 
great flock of geese passing over quite on the 
other side of us and pretty high up. From time 
to time one of the company uttered a short note, 
— that peculiarly metallic, clangorous sound. 
They were in a single undulating line, and, as 
usual, one or two were from time to time 
crowded out of the line, apparently by the 
crowding of those in the rear, and were flying 
on one side and trying to recover their places. 
But at last a second short line was formed, 
meeting the long one at the usual angle, and 
making a figure somewhat like a hay-hook. I 
suspect it will be found there is really some 
advantage in large birds of passage flying in 
the wedge form and cleaving their way through 
the air, — that they really do overcome its re- 
sistance best in this way, and perchance the 
direction and strength of the wind determine 
the comparative length of the two sides. The 
great gulls fly generally up and down the river 
valley, cutting oflE the bends of the river, and 
so do these geese. They fly sympathizing with 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 263 

the river, a stream In the air, soon lost In the 
distant sky. If you scan the horizon at this 
season you are very likely to detect a flock of 
dark ducks moving with rapid wing athwart 
the sky, or see the imdulating line of migrating 
geese. 

Ball's Hill, with its withered oak leaves and 
its pines, looks very fair to-day, a mile and a 
half o£E across the water, through a very thin 
varnish or haze. It reminds me of the isle 
which was called up from the bottom of the sea 
and given to Apollo. How charming the con- 
trast of land and water, especiaUv where there 
is a temporary island in the flood with ite new 
and tender shores of waving outline, so with- 
drawn, yet habitable ; above all, if it rises into 
a hill high above the water, so contrasting with 
it the more, and, if that hill is wooded, suggest- 
ing wildness. Our vernal lakes have a beauty 
to my mind which they would not possess if 
they were more permanent. Everything is in 
rapid flux here, suggesting that nature is alive 
to her extremities and superficies. To-day we 
sail swiftly on dark rolling waves, or paddle 
over a sea as smooth as a mirror, unable to 
touch the bottom where mowers work and hide 
their jugs in August, coasting the edge of maple 
swamps where alder tassels and white-maple 
flowers are kissing the tide that has risen to 



264 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

meet them. But this particular phase of beauty 
is fleeting. Nature has so many shows for us, 
she cannot afford to give much time to this. In 
a few days, perchance, these lakes will all have 
run away to the sea. Such are the pictures 
which she paints. When we look at our mas- 
terpieces we see only dead paint and its vehicle, 
which suggests no liquid life rapidly flowing 
off from beneath. But in nature it is con- 
stant surprise and novelty. . . . As we sweep 
past the north end of Poplar Hill, its now dry- 
ish, pale brown, withered sward, clothing its 
rounded slope which was lately saturated with 
moisture, presents very agreeable hues. In 
this light, in fair weather, the patches of now 
dull greenish masses contrast just regularly 
enough with the pale brown grass. It is like 
some rich but modest-colored Kidderminster 
carpet, or rather the skin of a monster python 
tacked to the hillside and stuffed with earth. 
. . . The earth lies out now like a leopard dry- 
ing her lichen and moss spotted skin in the sun, 
her sleek and variegated hide. I know that the 
few raw spots will heal over. Brown is the 
color for me, the color of our coats and our 
daily lives, the color of the poor man's loaf. 
The bright tints are pies and cakes, good only 
for October feasts, which would make us sick if 
eaten evei^ day. . . . 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 265 

Undoubtedly the geese fly more numerously 
over rivers which, like ours, flow northeasterly; 
are more at home with the water under them. 
Each flock runs the gauntlet of a thousand gun- 
ners; and when you see them steer o£E from you 
and your boat, you may remember how great 
their experience in such matters may be, how 
many such boats and gunners they have seen 
and avoided between here and Mexico. Even 
now (though you, low plodding, little dream it) 
they may perhaps see one or two more lying in 
wait ahead. They have an experienced ranger 
of the air for their guide. The echo of one 
gun hardly dies away, before they see another 
pointed at them. How many bullets or smaller 
shot have sped in vain toward their ranks! 

Ducks fly more irregularly, and shorter dis- 
tances at a time. The geese rest in fair weather 
by day only in the midst of our broadest mead- 
ows and ponds. So they go anxious and ear- 
nest to hide their nests under the pole. The 
gulls, more used to boats and sails, will often 
fly quite near without manifesting alarm. 

March 29 and 30, 1842. Though nature's 
laws are more immutable than any despot's, 
they rarely seem rigid, but relax with Kcense in 
summer weather. We are not often nor harshly 
reminded of the things we may not do. I am 
often astonished to see how long and with what 



255 EA£LT SFEISG rsr MAS&ACHUSErrTS 






die widMWt priest. JJl dKf vink ife 
ir^r if tiiqr are soc <we port <iC kr, they 



I am eomriiMCsd diat eoiwaf^gnPT is Ae 
c^ healrii, Hiov manT a pcucir maai, stzirii^ tD 
lire a pure life, pines and dies after a life of 
mt^OMsmk, 9Mki his sueeeKors doubt if Batme is 
not pidleM; while tbe ooafimied and eaosstent 
sot, who is etmtent with Iiis rank life like mnsb- 
rooms, a mass of eormpdoiL, still doses comfort- 
ably under a hedge. He has made his peace 
with himself; there is no strife. Nature is 
reallj rery kind and liberal to all persons of 
Tieious habits. They take great licenses with 
her. She does not exhaust them with many 
excesses. 

How hard it is to be greatly related to man- 
kind. They are only our uncles and aunts and 
cousins. I hear of some persons greatly related, 
but only he is so who has all mankind for his 
friend. Our intercourse with the best grows 
soon shallow and trivial. They no longer in- 
spire us. After enthusiasm comes insipidity. 
The sap of all noble schemes drieth up, and the 
schemers return again and again in despair to 
^* common sense and labor." If I could help 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETT^S 267 

infuse some life and heart into society, should 
I not do a service ? Why will not the gods mix 
a little of the wine of nobleness with the air we 
drink? let virtue have some firm foothold in 
the earth? Where does she dwell? Who are 
the salt of the earth? May not Love have 
some resting-place on the earth as sure as the 
sunshine on the rock? The crystals imbedded 
in the cliffs sparkle and gleam from afar, as if 
they did certainly enrich our planet, but where 
does any virtue permanently sparkle and gleam ? 
She was sent forth over the earth too soon, be- 
fore the earth was prepared for her. Right- 
fully we are to each other the gate of heaven 
and redeemers from sin, but how we overlook 
these lowly and narrow ways. We will go 
over the bald mountain - tops without going 
through the valleys. Men do not, after all, 
meet on the ground of their real acquaintance 
and actual understanding of one another, but 
degrade themselves immediately into the pup- 
pets of convention. They do as if, in given 
circumstances, they had agreed to know each 
other only so well. They rarely get so far as 
to inform one another gratuitously, and use each 
other like the sea and the woods for what is 
new and inspiring there. The best intercourse 
and communion they have is a silence above and 
behind their speech. We should be very sim* 



268 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

pie to rely on words. What we knew before 
always interprets a man's words. I cannot 
easily remember what any man has said to me, 
but how can I forget what he is to me ? We 
know each other better than we are aware. 
We are admitted to startling privacies with 
every person we meet. 

March 29, 1853. . . . p. m. To the early 
willow behind Martial Miles's. . . . On the 
railroad I hear the telegraph. This is the lyre 
that is as old as the world. I put my ear to 
the post and the sound seems to be in its core 
directly against my ear. This is all of music. 
The utmost refinements of art, I think, can go 
no further. . . . 

Walking along near the edge of the meadow 
under Lupine Hill, I slumped through the sod 
into a muskrat's nest, for there was only a thick- 
ness of two inches over it, which wa^ enough 
when it was frozen. I laid it open with my 
hands. There were three or four channels or 
hollowed paths a rod or more in length, not 
merely worn but made in the meadow, centring 
at the mouth of this burrow. They were three 
or four inches deep, and finally became indis- 
tinct, and were lost amid the cranberry vines 
and grass toward the river. The entrance to 
the burrow was just at the edge of the upland, 
here a gentle sloping bank, and was probably 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 269 

just beneath the surface of the water six weeks 
ago. It was about twenty-five rods distant 
from the true bank of the river. From this a 
straight gallery about six inches in diameter 
every way sloped upward about eight feet into 
the bank just beneath the turf, so that the end 
was about a foot higher than the entrance. 
Here was a somewhat circular enlargement 
about one foot in horizontal diameter and of the 
same depth as the gallery. In it was nearly a 
peck of coarse meadow stubble, showing the 
marks of the scythe, with which was mixed acci- 
dentally a very little of the moss that grew with 
it. Three short galleries, only two feet long, 
were continued from this centre, somewhat like 
rays, toward the high land, as if they had been 
prepared in order to be ready for a sudden 
rise of the water, or had been actually made so 
far under such an emergency. The nest was 
of course thoroughly wet, and, humanly speak- 
ing, uncomfortable, though the creature could 
breathe in it. But it is plain that the muskrat 
cannot be subject to the toothache. I have no 
doubt this was made and used last winter, for 
the grass was as fresh as that in the meadow 
(except that it was pulled up), and the sand 
which had been taken out lay partly in a flat- 
tened heap in the meadow, and no grass had 
sprung up through it. In the course of the 



270 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

above examination I made a very interesting 
discovery. When I turned up the thin sod 
from over the damp cavity of the nest, I was 
surprised to see at this hour of a pleasant day 
what I took to be beautiful frost crystals of a 
rare form, frost bodkins I was in haste to name 
them, for around the fine white roots of the 
grass, apparently herd's-grass, which were from 
one to two or more inches long, reaching down- 
ward into the dark, damp cavern (though the 
grass blades had scarcely made so much growth 
above; indeed the growth was scarcely visible 
there), appeared to be lingering still into the 
middle of this warm afternoon rare and beauti- 
ful frost crystals exactly in the form of a bod- 
kin, about one sixth of an inch wide at base, 
and tapering evenly to the lower end. Some- 
times the upper part of the core was naked for 
half an inch, which gave them a slight resem- 
blance to feathers, though they were not flat, 
but round. At the abrupt end of the rootlet, 
as if cut oflf, was a larger dewdrop. On exam- 
ining them more closely, feeling and tasting 
them, I found that it was not frost, but a clear 
crystalline dew in almost invisible drops, con- 
centrated from the dampness of the cavern, per- 
haps melted frost, preserving by its fineness its 
original color, thus regularly arranged around 
the delicate white fibre. Looking again, in- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 271 

credulous, I discerned extremely minute white 
threads or gossamer standing out on all sides 
from the main rootlet and affording the core for 
these drops. Yet on those fibres which had lost 
their dew, none of these minute threads ap- 
peared. ... It impressed me as a wonderful 
piece of chemistry, that the very grass we tram- 
ple on and esteem so cheap should be thus won- 
derfully nourished, that this spring greenness 
was not produced by coarse and cheap means, 
but that in the sod, out of sight, the most deli- 
cate and magical processes are going on. The 
half is not shown. ... I brought home some 
tufts of the grass in my pocket, but when I 
took it out, I could not at first find those pearly 
white fibres and thought they were lost, for they 
were shrimk to dry brown threads, and as for 
the still finer gossamer which supported the 
roscid droplets, with few exceptions they were 
absolutely undiscoverable. They mo longer 
stood out around the core, so delicate was their 
organization. It made me doubt almost if 
there were not actual, substantial, though in- 
visible cores to the leaflets and veins of the hoar 
frost. Can these almost invisible and tender 
fibres penetrate the earth where there is no cav- 
ern ? Or is what we call the solid earth porous 
and cavernous enough for them? 

March 29, 1856. As I stand on Heywood'^s 



272 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Peak looking over Walden, more than half its 
surface already sparkling blue water, I inhale 
with pleasure the cold but wholesome air, like 
a draught of cold water, contrasting it in my 
memory with the wind of summer, which I do 
not thus eagerly swallow. This, which is a 
chilling wind to my fellow, is decidedly refresh- 
ing to me. I swallow it with eagerness as a 
panacea. I feel an impulse also already to 
jump into the half-melted pond. This cold 
wind is refreshing to my palate as the warm air 
of sunshine is not, methinks. 

March 29, 1858. . . . p. m. To Ball's 
Hill. ... As I sit two thirds up the simny 
side of Fine Hill, looking over the meadows, 
now almost completely bare, the crows, by their 
swift flight and scolding, reveal to me some 
large bird of prey hovering over the river. I 
perceive by its marking and size that it cannot 
be a hen-hawk, and now it settles on the top- 
most branch of a white maple, bending it down. 
Its great armed and feathered legs dangle help- 
lessly in the air for a moment, as if feeling for 
the perch, while its body is tipping this way and 
that. It sits there facing me some forty or fifty 
rods off, pluming itself, but keeping a good 
lookout. At this distance and in this light it 
appears to have a rusty-brown head and breast, 
and is white beneath, with rusty leg feathers 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 273 

and a tail black beneath. When it flies again,, 
it is principally black varied with white, regular 
light spots on its tail and wii^s beneatii, but 
chiefly a conspicuous white space on the for- 
ward part of the neck. Also some of the Tipper 
side of the tail or tail-coverts is white. It has 
broad, ragged, buzzard-like wiiigs. I think it 
must be an eagle (?). It lets itself docwn,. with 
its legs somewhat helplessly dangling, as if 
feeling for something on the bare meadow, and 
then gradually flies away, soaring^ and circling 
higher and higher until lost in the downy 
clouds. This lofty soaring is at least a. grand 
recreation, as if it were nourishing sablime 
ideas. I should like to know why it soars 
higher and higher so, whether its thoughts are 
really turned to earth, for it seenns to be more 
nobly as well as highly employed than the la- 
borers ditching in the meadows beneath, (x any 
others of my feUow-townsmen. 

With many men their fine mamiers are at Ke 
all over, a skin coat or finish of falsehood. 
They are not brave enough to do without i^s 
sort of armor, which they wear night and day, 

March 30, 1840. Pray, what things interest 
me at present? A long soaking rain, the drops 
trickling down the stubble, while I lay drenched 
on a last year's bed of wild oats by the side of 
some bare hill, ruminating. These things are 



274 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

of moment. To watch this crystal globe just 
sent from heaven to associate with me. While 
these clouds and this sombre drizzling weather 
shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one 
another. The gathering in of the clouds with 
the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and 
then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves 
the country over, give the impression of inward 
comfort and sociableness. The drenched stub- 
ble and trees that drop beads on you as you 
pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on 
all sides, drooping in sympathy with yourself, 
these are my undisputed territory, this is na- 
ture's English comfort. The birds draw closer 
and are more familiar under the thick foliage, 
composing new strains on their roosts against 
the sunshine. 

March 30, 1841. I find my life growing 
slovenly when it does not exercise a constant 
supervision over itself. Its deeds accumulate. 
Next to having lived a day well, is a clear and 
calm overlooking of all our days. 

FRIENDSHIP. 

Now we are partners in such legal trade, 
We 11 look to the beginnings, not the ends, 
Nor to pay-day, knowing true wealth is made 
For current stock, and not for dividends. 

March 30, 1853. Ah, those youthful days, 
are they never to return? when the walker does 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 275 

not too enviously observe particulars, but sees, 
hears, scents, tastes, and feels only himself, the 
phenomena that showed themselves in him, his 
expanding body, his intellect and heart. No 
worm or insect, quadruped or bird, confined his 
view, but the unbounded universe was his. A 
bird has now become a mote in his eye. 

Dug into what I take to be a woodchuck's 
burrow in the low knoll below the cliffs. It 
was in the side of the hill, and sloped gently 
downward, at first diagonally into the hill about 
five feet, perhaps westerly, then turned and ran 
north about three feet, then northwest further 
into the hill four feet, then north again four 
feet, then northeast I know not how far, the 
last five feet, perhaps, ascending. It was the 
full length of the shovel from the surface of 
the ground to the bottom of the hole when I left 
off, owing, perhaps, to the rise of the hill. The 
hole was arched above and flat on the bottom 
like an oven, Q about five inches in diametei 
at the base. It seemed to have a pretty hard 
crust as I probed into it. There was a little 
enlargement, perhaps ten inches in diameter, in 
the angle at the end of twelve feet. It was thus. 
It was a wonder where the sand was 
conveyed to, for there was not a wheel- 

■SntruiM. 

barrow load at the entrance. 




276 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

March 30, 1854. • . . Read an interesting 
article on Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire, the 
friend and contemporary of Cuvier, though 
opposed to him in his philosophy. He believed 
species to be variable. In looking for anatomi- 
cal resemblances he found that he could not 
safely be guided by function, form, structure, 
size, color, etc., but only by the relative posi- 
tion and mutual dependence of organs. Hence 
his "Le Principe des Connexions," and his 
maxim, "An organ is sooner destroyed than 
transposed," — "Un organ est plutot alt^r^, 
atrophie, aneanti, que transpose." A principal 
formula of his was, "Unity of Plan, Unity of 
Composition." ("Westminster Review," Janu- 
ary, 1864.) 

March 30, 1855. . . . He must have a great 
deal of life in him to draw upon, who can pick 
up a subsistence in November and March. Man 
comes out of his winter quarters this month as 
lean as a woodchuck. Not till late could the 
skimk find a place where the ground was thawed 
on the surface. Except for science do not 
travel in such a climate as this in November 
and March. I tried if a fish would take the 
bait to-day, but in vain; I did not get a nibble. 
Where are they ? 

March 30, 1856. P. M. To Walden and 
Fair Haven. Still cold and blustering. 1 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 277 

came out to see the sand and subsoil in the deep 
cut as I would to see a spring flower, some red- 
ness on the cheek of earth. . • . I go to Fair 
Haven via the Andromeda Swamp. The river 
is a foot and more in depth there still. There 
is a little bare ground in and next to the 
swampy woods at the head of Well Meadow, 
where the springs and little black rills are flow- 
ing. I see already one blade, three or four 
inches long, of that purple or lake grass, lying 
flat on some water between snow-clad banks, 
the first leaf with a rich bloom on it. How 
silent are the footsteps of spring ! There, too, 
where there is a fraction of the meadow, two 
rods over, quite bare under the bank, in this 
warm recess at the head of the meadow, though 
the rest is covered with snow a foot or more in 
depth, I was surprised to see the skunk-cab- 
bage, with its great spear-heads, open and ready 
JO blossom, and the Caltha palustris bud, which 
fihows yellowish, and the golden saxifrage green 
and abundant, all surrounded and hemmed in 
by snow which has covered the ground since 
Christmas, and stretches as far as you can see 
on every side. The spring advances in spite of 
snow and ice and cold even. The ground under 
the snow has long since felt the influence of the 
spring sun whose rays fell at a more favorable 
angle. The tufts or tussocks next the edge of 



278 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

the snow were crowned with dense phalanxes of 
spears of the stiff, triangularish sedge-grass five 
inches high, but quite yellow, with a very slight 
greeuness at the tip, showing that they pushed 
up through the snow, and, though it had melted, 
had not yet acquired color. In warm recesses 
in meadows and clefts, in rocks in the midst of 
ice and snow, nay, even under the snow, vege- 
tation commences and steadily advances. 

March 30, 1858. p. m. To my boat at 
Cardinal Shore and thence to Lee's Cliff. . . . 
Landing at Bittern Cliff I went round through 
the woods to get sight of ducks on the pond. 
Creeping down through the woods I reached 
the rocks, and saw fifteen or twenty sheldrakes 
scattered about. The full - plumaged males^ 
conspicuously black and white, and often swim- 
ming in pairs, appeared to be the most wary, 
keeping farthest out. Others, with much less 
white, and duller black, were very busily fish- 
ing just north of the inlet of the pond, where 
there is about three feet of water, and others 
still playing and preening themselves. These 
ducks, whose tame representatives are so slug- 
gish and deliberate in their motions, were full 
of activity. A party of them fishing and play- 
ing is a very lively scene. On one side, for 
instance, you will see eight or ten busily diving 
and most of the time imder water, not rising 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 279 

high when they come up, and soon plunging 
again. The whole surface will be in commo- 
tion, though no ducks are to be seen. I saw 
one come up with a large fish, whereupon all 
the rest, as they successively came to the sur- 
face, gave chase to it, while it held its prey 
over the water in its bill. They pursued it 
with a great rush and clatter a dozen or more 
rods over the surface, making a great furrow 
in the water, but there being some trees in the 
way I could not see the issue. I saw seven or 
eight all dive together, as with one consent, 
remaining under half a mmute or more. On 
another side you see a party which seem to be 
playing and pluming themselves. They will 
swim rapidly and dive, and come up and dive 
again every three or four feet, occasionally one 
pursuing another, will flutter in the water, 
making it fly, or erect themselves at full length 
on the surface like a penguin, and flap their 
wings. This party make an incessant noise. 
Again, you will see some steadily tacking this 
way or that in the middle of the pond, and 
often they rest there asleep with their heads in 
their backs. They readily cross the pond, 
swinuning from this side to that. 

March 30, 1859. 6 a. m. To Hill (across 
water). Hear a red squirrel chirrup at me by 
the hemlocks. It is all for my benefit, not that 



280 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

be is excited by fear, I think, but so full is he 
of animal spirits that he makes a great ado 
about the least event. At first he scratches on 
the bark very rapidly with his hind feet, with- 
out moving the fore feet. He makes so many 
queer sounds, and so different from one another, 
that you would think they came from half a 
dozen creatures. I hear now two sounds from 
him of a very distinct character, a low or base 
internal, worming, screwing kind of sound (very- 
like that, by the way, which an anxious par- 
tridge mother makes), and at the same time a 
very sharp and shrill bark, clear, and on a very 
high key, totally distinct from the last, while 
his tail is flourishing incessantly. You might 
say that he successfully accomplished the diffi- 
cult feat of singing and whistling at the same 
time. 

p. M. To Walden via Hubbard's Close. 
. . . See on Walden two sheldrakes, male and 
female (as is common), so they have for some 
time paired. They are a hundred rods off, the 
male, the larger, with his black head and white 
breast; the female with a red head. With my 
glass I see the long red bills of both. They 
swim, at first one way near together, then tack 
and swim the other, looking around incessantly, 
never quite at their ease, wary and watchful for 
foes. A man cannot walk down to the shore^ 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 281 

or stand out on a hill overlooking the pond, 
without disturbing them. They will have an 
eye upon him. The locomotive whistle makes 
every wild duck start that is floating within the 
limits of the town. I see that these ducks are 
not here for protection alone, for at last they 
both dive and remain beneath about forty pulse- 
beats, and again and again. I think they are 
looking for fishes. Perhaps, therefore, these 
divers are more likely to alight in Walden than 
the black ducks are. Hear the hovering note 
of a snipe. 

March 31, 1842. I cannot forget the maj- 
esty of that bird at the ClifF. It was no sloop 
or smaller craft hove in sight, but a ship of the 
line, worthy to struggle with the elements. It 
was a great presence, as of the master of river 
and forest. His eye would not have quailed 
before the owner of the soil, none could chal- 
lenge his rights. And then his retreat, sailing 
so steadily away, was a kind of advance. How 
is it that man always feels like an interloper in 
nature, as if he had intruded on the domains of 
bird and beast? 

The really efficient laborer will be found not 
to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to 
his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and 
leisure. There will be a wide margin for relax- 
ation to his day. He is only earnest to secure 



282 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

m 

the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate 
the value of the husk. Why should the hen sit 
all day ? She can lay but one egg ; and besides, 
she will not have picked up materials for a new 
one. Those who work much do not work hard. 
Nothing is so sure as sense. Very uncom- 
mon sense is poetry, a«d has a heroic or sweet 
music. But in verse, for the most part, the 
music now runs before and now behind the 
sense, is not coincident with it. Given the 
metre, and one will make music while another 
makes sense. But good verse, like a good sol- 
dier, will make its own music, and it will march 
to the same with one consent. In most verse 
there is no inherent music. The man should 
not march, but walk like a citizen. . . . Lyd- 
gate's "Story of Thebes," intended for a Can- 
terbury tale, is a specimen of most unprogres- 
sive, unmusical verse. Each line rings the 
knell of its brother as if it were introduced but 
to dispose of him. No mortal man could have 
breathed to that cadence without long intervals 
of relaxation. The repetition would have been 
fatal to the lungs. No doubt there was much 
healthy exercise taken in the mean while. He 
should forget his rhyme and tell his story, 
or forget his story and breathe himself. In 
Shakespeare and elsewhere the climax may be 
Bomewhere along the line which runs as varied 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 283 

and meandering as a country road ; but in Lyd- 
gate it is nowhere but in the rhyme. The coup- 
lets slope headlong to their confluence. 

March 31, 1862. Intended to get up early 
this morning and commence a series of spring 
walks, but clouds and drowsiness prevented. 
Early, however, I saw the clouds in the west, 
for my window looks that way, suffused with 
rosy light, but that flattery is all forgotten now. 
How can one help being an early riser and 
walker in that season when the birds begin to 
twitter and sing in the morning. 

The expedition in search of Sir John Frank- 
lin, in 1850, landed at Cape Riley, on the north 
side of Lancaster Sound, and one vessel brought 
oiBf relics of Franklin, m25., "five pieces of beef, 
mutton, and pork bones, together with a bit of 
rope, a small rag of canvas, and a chip of wood 
cut by an axe." Richardson says: "From a 
careful examination of the beef bones, I came 
to the conclusion that they had belonged to 
pieces of salt beef ordinarily supplied to the 
navy, and that probably they and the other 
bones had been exposed to the atmosphere and 
friction in rivulets of melted snow for four or 
five summers. The rope was proved by the 
ropemaker who examined it to have been made 
at Chatham, of Hungarian hemp, subsequent to 
1841. The fragment of canvas, which seemed 



284 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

to have been part of a boat's swab, had the 
Queen's broad arrow painted on it, and the 
chip of wood was of ash, a tree which does not 
grow on the banks of any river that falls into 
the Arctic sea. It had, however, been long 
exposed to the weather, and was likely to have 
been cut from a piece of drift timber found 
lying on the spot, as the mark of an axe wad 
recent compared to the surface of the wood, 
which might have been exposed to the weather 
for a century." "The grounds of these conclu- 
sions were fully stated in a report made to the 
Admiralty by Sir Edward Parry, myself, and 
other officers." Is not here an instance of the 
civilized man's detecting the traces of a friend 
or foe with a skill at least equal to that of the 
savage? Indeed it is in both cases but a com- 
mon sense applied to the objects, and in a man- 
ner most familiar to both parties. The skill of 
the savage is just such a science, though re- 
ferred sometimes to instinct. 

Perchance, as we grow old, we cease to 
spring with the spring, we are indifferent to the 
succession of years, and they go by without 
epoch as months. Woe be to us when we cease 
to form new resolutions on the opening of a 
new year. 

It would be worth while to tell why a swamp 
pleases us, why a certain kind of weather 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 285 

pleases us, etc., analyze our impressions. Why 
does the moaning of the storm give me pleas- 
ure? Methinks because it puts to rout the 
trivialness of our fair-weather life, and gives it, 
at least, a tragic interest. The soimd has the 
efiPect of a pleasing challenge to call forth our 
energy to resist the invaders of our life's terri- 
tory. It is musical and thrilling as the sound 
of an enemy's bugle. Our spirits revive like 
lichens in a storm. There is something worth 
living for when we are resisted, threatened. 
As at the last day we might be thrilled with 
the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so 
in these first days our destiny appears grander. 
What would the days, what would our life, be 
worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, 
of darkness tangible, that you can cut with a 
knife! How else could the light in the mind 
shine ! How should we be conscious of the light 
of reason? If it were not for physical cold 
how should we have discovered the warmth of 
the affections. I sometimes feel that I need 
to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks' 
storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my sys- 
tem. The spring has its windy March to usher 
it in, with many soaking rains reaching into 
April. 

Methinks I would share every creature's suf- 
fering for the sake of its experience and joy- 



jtr jcr v^vx^Tr zr 'rr;{7f-n':^:jxrL:i"^ 



JQC 'ae lamnv^ ic ^K: :3i]&-<aifiiBfL 



ILUIII t ^ - *l 




>« X :pV ^ iwj^fT t Lttlfl llsillK I JDETfir XDOT5- 

'^M^iK x^ On#t tiki :uic: muss: laa -«9ie^ ol 



Ih^ i!Mf/Cf» aoui \0agfih \^tx&0:: vaefT snr arT^aniusS. 

aA4 ft>^^ aiwi m^ anfe^j^BscSi^ &> ise £7»:i:i -^^^ 
m^ ^A tf^ omr^T^; tluEt buzl d'j«» iwc ^i-mr-ir- 
ffUcsi^. with it, md^ntaiwi i» htaiz^assi^ beeaoae 
b^ i» o^H ad <i«K with oatare. I reprcoeh mr* 
iMrIf ^^^ta^axiM; J hzr^ regafded with iiidiSe?«iee 
t}^; paMKai^^ //f the hird»; I liare thmiglit them 
n// (^(kr tfaaui L 

Wi$Hi phiUm/]f}ufr can estimate the different 
ffiUutn //f a waking thrmgbt and a dream? 

I ti^^ar laU; t/^-nigbt the unspeakable rain 
fffiff^l/'^l with rattling Know against the windows, 
|;r<?|mriii|( ih«; ground for spring. 

Marrh JJl, 1853. The robins sing at the 
s^^vy i*Mv\w.¥X dawn. I wake with their note 
ringing in my car. 6 a. m. To Island by boat. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 287 

... 9 A. M. To Lincoln, surveying for Mr. 
Austin. The catkins of the hazel are now 
trembling in the wind and much lengthened, 
showing yellowish and beginning to shed pollen. 
Saw and heard sing In a pea«h orchard my 
warbling vireo of the morning. It must be 
the fox-colored sparrow. It is plumper than 
a bluebird, tail fox-colored, a distinct spot on 
the breast, no bars visible on wings; beginning 
with a clear, rich, deliberate note, jingling more 
rapidly, much like the warbling vireo, at the 
end. I afterwards heard a fine concert of little 
songsters along the edge of the meadow; ap- 
proached and watched and listened for more 
than half an hour. There were many little 
sparrows, difficult to detect, flitting and hop- 
ping along, and scratching the ground like hens 
under the alders, willows, and cornels, in a wet, 
leafy place, occasionally alighting and preening 
themselves. They had bright bay crowns, two 
rather distinct white bars on wings, an ashy 
breast, and dark tail. These twittered sweetly, 
in some parts very much like a canary, and 
many together, making the fullest and sweetest 
concert I have heard yet. Like a shopful of 
canaries. About the size of a song-sparrow. 
I think these are the tree-sparrow. Also mixed 
with them, and puzzling me to distinguish for 
a long time, were many of the fox-colored (?) 



288 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

sparrows mentioned above, with a creamy, cin- 
namon-tinged, ashy breast, cinnamon shoulder- 
let, and ashy about side-head and throat, with 
a fox - colored tail. A size larger than the 
others, the spot on breast very marked. Here 
were evidently two birds intimately mixed. 
Did not Peabody confound them when he 
mentioned the mark on the breast of the tree- 
sparrow ? The rich strain of the fox - colored 
sparrow, as I think it, added much to the 
choir. The latter, solos, the former, in concert. 
I kept off a hawk by my presence. They were 
a long time invisible to me except when they 
flitted past. . . . 

Mount Tabor. ... It is affecting to see a 
distant moimtain-top, like the summits of Un- 
cannunuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you 
camped for a night in your youth, which you 
have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal 
to your eyes as is your memory of it. It lies 
like an isle in the far heavens, a part of earth 
unprofaned, which does not bear a price in the 
market, is not advertised by the real estate 
broker. 

March 31, 1854. In criticising your writ- 
ing, trust your finest instinct. There are many 
things which we come very near questioning, 
but do not question. When I have sent off my 
manuscripts to the printer, certain objectionable 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 289 

sentences or expressions are sure to obtrude 
themselves on my attention with force, though 
I had not consciously suspected them before. 
My critical instinct then at once breaks the ice 
and comes to the surface. 

March 31, 1856. I see through the window 
that it is a very fine day, the first really warm 
one. I did not know the whole till I came out 
at 3 P. M. and walked to the ClifFs. The slight 
haze of yesterday has become very thick, with 
a southwest wind, concealing the mountains. I 
can see it in the air within two or three rods as 
I look against the bushes. The fuzzy gnats 
are in the air, and bluebirds whose warble is 
thawed out; I am uncomfortably warm, grad- 
ually unbutton both my coats, and wish that I 
had left the outside one at home. I go listen- 
ing for the croak of the first frog or peep of a 
hylodes. It is suddenly warm, and this ameli- 
oration of the weather is incomparably the most 
important fact in this vicinity. It is incredible 
what a revolution in our feelings and in the 
aspect of nature this warmer air alone has pro- 
duced. Yesterday the earth was simple to bar- 
renness, and dead, bound out. Out of doors 
there was nothing but the wind and the with- 
ered grass, and the cold though sparkling blue 
water, and you were driven in upon yourself. 
Now, you would think there was a sudden awak« 



2S* EA£ZT SP£J3^G JOT MAS^ACSTSETTS 

CIS iR3re f*¥jBETM^TPg xod ^exTeE' jnnziikg fardi; 
but iKnr SOL I BfSiexi in xazzi xc« iiear m frog or 
a neir lord as t^s. (JhDx i^ froBeai ^[ivmMl is 
^^^'^tmg a IixLle d€9Eper. azid i^ ^inser is trick* 
ling; froBi tiie HOf. in SGs&e pSaees. Xo, the 
daiige 15 munlr in ns^ We f fiel as if we had 
obcauned a nev lease of life. 

Mardk 31, 1S56. I see the seulet tops of 
white maples iieaihr a mile o5 down the river, 
the Instv shoots of last Tear. Those of the red 
maple do not show thus. I see many little 
holes in the old and solid snow where leaves 
have sunk down gradually and perpendicularly 
eleven or twelve inches, the hole no larger at 
the top than at the bottom, nay. often partly 
closed at top by the drifting, and exactly the 
f onn and size of the leaf. It is as if the son 
had driven this thin shield like a bullet thus 
deep into the solid snow. 

March 31, 1857. A very pleasant day. 
Spent a part of it in the garden preparing to 
set out fruit trees. It is agreeable once more 
to put a spade into the warm mould. The vic- 
tory is ours at last, for we remain and take pos- 
session of the field. In this climate, in which 
we do not commonly bury our dead in the win- 
ter on account of the frozen ground, and find 
ourselves exposed on a hard, bleak crust, the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 291 

coming out of the frost, and the first turning up 
of the soil with a spade or plough, is an event of 
importance. 

p. M. To Hill. As I ascend the east side 
of the hill I hear the distant faint peep of the 
hylodes, and the tut tut of the croaking frogs 
from the west. How gradually and impercepti- 
bly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and 
swells the volume of sound which makes the 
voice of awakening nature ! If you do not lis- 
ten carefully for its first note you probably will 
not hear it; and not having heard that, your 
ears become used to the sound, so that you will 
hardly notice it at last, however loud and uni- 
versal. I hear it now faintly from through and 
over the bare gray twigs and the sheeny needles 
of an oak and pine wood, and from over the 
russet fields beyond. It is so intimately min- 
gled with the murmur or roar of the wind as to 
be well-nigh inseparable from it. It leaves such 
a lasting trace on the ear's memory that often I 
think I hear the peeping when I do not. It is 
a singularly emphatic and ear-piercing procla- 
mation of animal life, when, with a very few 
and slight exceptions, vegetation is yet dormant. 
The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a 
sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of 
quacking^ and they are both of the water) is 
plainly enough down there in some pool in the 



292 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

woods. But the shrill peeping of the hylodes 
locates itself nowhere in particular. It seems 
to take its rise at an indefinite distance over 
wood and hill and pasture, from clefts or hol- 
lows, in the March wind. It is not so much of 
the earth, earthy, as of the air, airy. It rises 
at once on the wind and is at home there, and 
we are incapable of tracing it farther back. 
What an important part to us the little peeping 
hylodes acts, filling all our ears with sound in 
the spring afternoons and evenings, while the 
existence of the otter, our largest wild animal, 
is not betrayed to any of our senses, or at least 
not to more than one in a thousand. 

An Irishman is digging a ditch for a founda- 
tion wall of a new shop where James Harris's 
shop stood. He tells me that he dug up three 
cannon balls just in the rear of the shop within 
a foot of each other and about eighteen inches 
beneath the surface. I saw one of them, which 
was about three and one half inches in diameter 
and somewhat eaten with rust on one side. 
These were probably thrown into the pond by 
the British on the 19th of April, 1775. Shat- 
tuck says that five hundred pounds of balls 
were thrown into the pond and wells. These 
may have been dropped out of the back win- 
dow. 

March 31, 1858. ... I see about a dozen 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 293 

black ducks on Flint's Pond, asleep with their 
heads on their backs and drifting across the 
pond before the wind. I suspect that they are 
nocturnal in their habits and therefore require 
much rest by day. So do the seasons revolve, 
and every chink is fiUed. While the waves 
toss, this bright day, the ducks asleep are drift- 
ing before the wind across the ponds. Every 
now and then one or two lift their heads and 
look about as if they watched by turns. . . . 
Just after sundown I see a large flock of wild 
geese in a perfect harrow cleaving their way 
toward the northeast, with Napoleonic tactics 
splitting the forces of winter. 

March 31, 1860. . . . The small red butter- 
fly in the woodpaths and sproutlands, and I 
hear at mid P. M. a very faint but positive ring- 
ing sound rising above the susurrus of the pines, 
of the breeze, which I think is the note of a 
distant and perhaps solitary toad, not loud and 
ringing as it will be. Toward night I hear it 
more distinctly and am more confident about it. 
I hear this faint first reptilian sound added to 
the sound of the winds thus, each year a little 
in advance of thie unquestionable note of the 
toad. Of constant sounds in the warmer parts 
of warm days there now begins to be added to 
the rustling or washing water-fall-like sound of 
the wind this faintest imaginable prelude of 



2M EARLY SPRIXG IX MASSACHUSETTS 

the toad. I ofcen draw my companion's atten- 
tion to it. and he fails to hear it at alL it is so 
slight a departure from the pieTioas monotony 
of ^lareh. This morning too walked in the 
warm sprootland. the strong hot warm south- 
west wind blowing, and Ton heard no sound bnt 
the drv and mechanical snsnrms of the wood ; 
now there is mingled with or added to it, to be 
detected only by the sharpest ears, this first and 
faintest imaginable Toice. I heard this under 
Mount MiseiT. Probably the toads come forth 
earlier under the warm slopes of that hill. . . . 
At evening I hear the first real robin^s song. 
April 1, 1841. 

OX THE SUN COMING OUT IN THE AFTERNOON. 

Metlimks all things bare trareled ance yoa ahined, 
Bat only Time and clouds, Time a team, bare mored ; 
Af^ain foal weather shall not change my mind. 
Bat in the shade I will beliere what in the san I lored. 

April 1, 1852. Walden is all white ice, but 
little melted about the shore. The very sight 
of it when I get so far on the causeway, though 
I hear the spring note of the chickadee from 
over the ice, carries my thoughts back at once 
some weeks toward winter, and a chill comes 
over them. 

The mountains seen from Bare Hill are very 
fine now in the horizon, so evanescent, being 
broadly spotted white and blue like the skins of 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 295 

some animals, the white predominating. The 
Peterboro' Hills to the north are almost all 
white. The snow has melted more on the more 
southern mountains. With their white mantles, 
notwithstanding the alternating dark patches, 
they melt into the sky. Yet perhaps the white 
portions may be distinguished by the peculiar 
light of the sun shining on them. 

1 hear a robin singing in the woods south of 
Hosmer's, just before sunset. It is a sound 
associated with New England village life. It 
brings to my thoughts summer evenings when 
the children are playing in the yards before the 
doors, and their parents, conversing, sit at the 
open windows. It foretells all this now, before 
those summer hours are come. 

As I come over the turnpike, the song-spar- 
row's jingle comes up from every part of the 
meadow, as native as the tinkling rills or the 
blossoms of the spiraea. Its cheep is like the 
sound of opening buds. 

April 1, 1853. The rain rests on the downy 
leaves of the young mulleins in separate, irregu- 
lar drops, from the irregularity and color look- 
ing like ice. The drops quite in the cup of the 
muUein have a peculiar translucent silveriness, 
apparently because while they are upheld by 
the wool the light is reflected which would other- 
wise be absorbed, as if they wer<d eased in light* 



296 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

The fresh mullein leaves are poshing np amid 
the brown, unsightly wrecks of last fall, which 
strew the ground like old clothes. . . . That 
early willow by Miles *s has been injured by the 
rain. The drops rest on the catkins as on the 
mullein. Though this began to open only day 
before yesterday, and was the earliest I could 
find, already I hear the well-known hum of a 
honey-bee, and one alights on it (also a fly or 
two), loads himself, circles round with a loud 
humming, and is off. Where the first willow 
catkin opens, there will be found the honey-bee 
also with it. He found this out as soon as I. 
The stamens have burst out on the side towards 
the top, like a sheaf of spears, thrust forth to 
encounter the sun, — so many spears as the 
garrison can spare, advanced into the summer. 
With this flower, so much more flower-like or 
noticeable than any yet, begins a new era in the 
flower season. 

April 1, 1854. The tree-sparrows, hiemalis, > 
and song-sparrows are particularly lively and 
musical in the yard this rainy and truly April 
day. The robin now begins to sing powerfully. 

p. M. Up Assabet to Dodge's Brook; thence 
to Farmer's. April has begun like itself. It 
is warm and showery, while I sail away with a 
light southwest wind toward the rock. Some- 
times the sun seems just ready to burst out, yet 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 297 

I know it will not. The meadow is becoming 
bare. It resounds with the sprayey notes of 
blackbirds. The birds sing this warm and 
showery day after a fortnight's cold (yesterday 
was wet, too), with a universal burst and flood 
of melody. Great flocks of hiemalis, etc., pass 
overhead like schools of fishes in the water, 
many abreast. The white-maple stamens are 
beginning to peep out from the wet and weather- 
beaten buds. The earliest alders are just ready 
to bloom, to show their yellow on the first de- 
cidedly warm and sunny day. The water is 
smooth at last, and dark. Ice no longer forms 
on the oars. It is pleasant to paddle under the 
dripping hemlocks this dark day. They make 
more of a wilderness impression than pines. 
The hiemalis is in the largest flocks of any at 
this season. Now see them come drifting over 
a rising ground, just like snow-flakes before a 
northeast wind ! 

April 1, 1855. When I look out the win- 
dow, I see that the grass on the bank on the 
south side of the house is already much greener 
than it was yesterday. As it cannot have grown 
so suddenly, how shall I account for it? 1 sus- 
pect the reason is that the few green blades are 
not merely washed bright by the rain, but erect 
themselves to imbibe its influence, and so are 
more prominent, while the withered blades are 
beaten down and flattened by it. 



298 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

April 1, 1858. I saw a squirrel's nest 
twenty-three or twenty-four feet high in a 
maple, and climbing to it (for it was so pecu- 
liar, having a basket-work of twigs about it, 
that I did not know but it was a hawk's nest) I 
found that it was a very perfect (probably) red 
squirrel's nest, made entirely of the now very 
dark or blackish green moss, such as grows on 
the button-bush and on the swampy ground, — 
a dense mass of it, about one foot through, wat- 
tled together, with an inobvious hole on the 
east side. A tuft of loose moss blowing up 
about it seemed to answer for a door or porch- 
covering. The cavity within was quite small, 
but very snug and warm, where one or two 
squirrels might lie warm in the severest storm, 
the dense moss walls being three inches thick 
or more. But what was most peculiar was that 
the nest, though placed over the centre of the 
tree, where it divided into four or five branches, 
was regularly and elaborately hedged about and 
supported by a basket-work of strong twigs 
stretched across from bough to bough; which 
twigs I perceived had been gnawed green from 
the maple itself, the stub ends remaining visi- 
ble all around. . . . 

April 2, 1852. 6 a. m. To the river-side 
and Merrick's pasture. The sun is up. The 
water in the meadows is perfectly smooth and 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 299 

placid, reflecting the hills and clouds and trees. 
The air is full of the notes of birds, song-spar- 
rows, redwings, robins (singing a strain), blue- 
birds, and I hear also a lark, as if all the earth 
had burst forth into song. The influence of 
this April morning has reached them, for they 
live out-of-doors all the night, and there is no 
danger they will oversleep themselves such a 
morning. A few weeks ago, before the birds 
had come, there came to my mind in the night 
the twittering sound of birds in the early dawn 
of a spring morning, — a semi-prophecy of it, 
— and last night I attended mentally, as if I 
heard the spray -like dreaming sound of the 
mid -summer frog, and realized how glorious 
and full of revelations it was. The clouds are 
white, watery, not such as we had in the win- 
ter. I see in this fresh morning the shells left 
by the muskrats along the shore, and their gal- 
leries leading into the meadow, and the bright 
red cranberries washed up along the shore in the 
old water-mark. Suddenly there is a blur on 
the placid surface of the waters, a rippling mis- 
tiness, produced, as it were, by a slight morn- 
ing breeze, and I should be sorry to show it to 
a stranger now. So is it with our minds. 

How few valuable observations can we make 
in youth ! What if there were united the sus- 
ceptibility of youth with the discrimination of 



300 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

age! Once I was part and parcel of nature; 
now I am observant of her. 

It appears to me that to one standing on the 
heights of philosophy mankind and the works 
of man will have sunk out of sight altogether ; 
that man is altogether too much insisted on. 
The poet says the proper study of mankind is 
man. I say, study to forget all that; take 
wider views of the universe. That is the ego- 
tism of the race. What is this our childish, 
gossiping, social literature, mainly in the hands 
of the publishers? Another poet says, "The 
world is too much with us." He means, of 
course, that man is too much with us. In the 
promulgated views of man in institutions, in the 
common sense, there is narrowness and delu- 
sion. It is our weakness that so exaggerates 
the virtue of philanthropy and charity, and 
makes it the highest human attribute. The 
world will sooner or later tire of philanthropy, 
and all religion based on it mainly. They can- 
not long sustain my spirit. In order to avoid 
delusions, I would fain let man go by, and be- 
hold a universe in which man is but a grain of 
sand. I am sure that those of my thoughts 
which consist or are contemporaneous with 
social, personal connections, however humane, 
are not the wisest and widest, most universal. 
What is the village, city, State, nation, ay, 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 301 

the citizen's world, that they should concern a 
man so much? The thought of them afiPects 
me in my wisest hours as when I pass a wood- 
chuck's hole. It is a comfortable place to nestle 
in, no doubt, and we have friends — some sym- 
pathizing ones, it may be — and a hearth there ; 
but I have only to get up at midnight, ay, to 
soar or wander a little in my thought by day, 
to find them all slumbering. Look at our liter- 
ature; what a poor, puny, social thing, seeking 
sympathy ! The author troubles himself about 
his readers, would fain have one before he dies. 
He stands too near his printer, he corrects the 
proofs. Not satisfied with defiling one another 
in this world, we would all go to heaven to- 
gether. To be a good man (that is, a good 
neighbor in the widest sense) is but little more 
than to be a good citizen. Mankind is a gigan- 
tic institution ; it is a community to which most 
men belong. It is a test I would apply to my 
companion. Can he forget man ? Can he see 
the world slumbering? I do not value any 
view of the universe into which man and the 
institutions of man enter very largely and ab- 
sorb much attention. Man is but the place 
where I stand, and the prospect hence is infi- 
nite. The universe is not a chamber of mirrors 
which reflect me when I reflect. I find that 
there is other than me. Man is a past phe- 



302 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

nomenon to philosophy; the universe is larger 
than enough for man's abode. Some rarely go 
outdoors; most are always at home at night; 
very few indeed have stayed out all night once 
in their lives ; fewer still have gone behind the 
world of humanity, seen its institutions like 
toad-stools by the wayside. 

April 2, 1853. The tree-sparrows and a few 
blue snow-birds in company sing (the former) 
very sweetly in the garden this morning. I 
now see a faint spot on the breast. It says 
something like a twee^ twee^ chit chit^ chit-chit- 
chee-var-r. 

The farmers are trembling for their poultry 
nowadays. I heard the screams of hens and a 
tumult among their mistresses (at Dugan's) call- 
ing them and scaring away the hawk yesterday. 
They say they do not lose by hawks in mid- 
summer. White quotes Linnaeus as saying 
of hawks, "Paciscuntur inducias cum avibus 
quamdiu cuculus cucullat," but White doubts 
it. . . . The song-sparrows, the three-spotted, 
away by the meadow-sides, are very shy and 
cunning : instead of flying, will frequently trot 
along the ground under the bushes, or dodge 
through a wall like a swallow ; and I have ob- 
served that they generally bring some object, as 
a rail or branch, between themselves and the 
face of the walker, — often with outstretched 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 303 

necks will peep at him for five or ten min- 
utes. 

Heard and saw what I call the pine warbler, 
— vettevy vettevy vetter^ vetter^ vet^ — the cool 
woodland sound. The first this year of the 
higher-colored birds, after the bluebird and the 
blackbird's wing, is it not? It affects me as 
something more tender. 

We cannot well afford not to see the geeseJ go 
over a single spring, and so commence our year 
regularly. 

April 2, 1854. p. m. To Conantum via 
Nut Meadow Brook. Saw black ducks in water 
and on land. Can see their light throats a 
great way off with my glass. They do not dive, 
but dip. . . . 

The radical leaves of some plants appear to 
have started, look brighter, — the shepherd's 
purse, and plainly the skunk - cabbage. In 
the brook there is the least possible springing 
yet, — a little yellow lily in the ditch, and 
sweet-flag starting. I was just sitting on the 
rail over the brook when I heard something 
which reminded me of the song of the robin in 
rainy days in past springs. Why is it that not 
the note itself, but something which reminds 
me of it, should affect me most? — the ideal 
instead of the actual. . . . 

The tree-sparrows make the alders, etc,, ring. 



804 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

They have a metallic chirp and a short canary- 
like warble. They keep company with the hie- 
malis. 

April 2, 1855. Green is essentially vivid or 
the color of life, and it is therefore most bril- 
liant when a plant is moist or most alive. . • . 
The word, according to Webster, is from the 
Saxon grene^ to grow, and hence is the color of 
herbage when growing. 

April 2, 1856. It is evident that it depends 
on the character of the season whether this 
flower or that is the most forward, whether 
there is more or less snow, or cold, or rain, etc. 

I am tempted to stretch myself on the bare 
groimd above the Cliff, to feel its warmth on 
my back and smell the earth and the dry leaves. 
I see and hear flies and bees about. A large 
buff -edged butterfly flutters by along the edge 
of the Cliff, Vanessa antiopa. Though so lit- 
tle of the earth is bare, this frail creature has 
been warmed into life again. Here is the 
broken shell of one of those large white snails, 
Hdix alholahris^ on the top of the Cliff. I am 
rejoiced to find anything so pretty. I cannot 
but think it nobler, as it is rarer, to appreciate 
some beauty than to feel much sympathy with 
misfortime. The powers are kinder to me when 
they permit me to enjoy this beauty than if they 
were to express any amount of compassion for 
me. I could never excuse them that. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 305 

April 2, 1858. At the spring on the west 
side of Fair Haven Hill I startle a striped snake. 
It is a large one, with a white stripe down the 
dorsal ridge between two black ones, and on 
each side the last a buff one, and blotchy brown 
sides, darker towards the tail. Beneath, green- 
ish yellow. This snake generally has a pinkish 
cast. There is another, evidently of the same 
species, but not half so large, with its neck lying 
affectionately across the first. When seen by 
itself you might have thought of a distinct spe- 
cies. The dorsal line on this one is bright yel- 
low, though not so bright as the lateral ones and 
the yellow about the head. Also, the black is 
more glossy, and this snake has no pink cast. 
No doubt on almost every such warm bank 
now you will find a snake lying out. They al- 
lowed me to lift their heads with a stick four or 
five inches without stirring, nor did they mind 
the flies that alighted on them, looking steadily 
at me without the slightest motion of head, 
body, or eyes, as if they were of marble; and 
as you looked back at them, you continually 
forgot that they were real, and not imaginary. 

On the side of Fair Haven Hill I go looking 
for baywings, turning my glass to each sparrow 
on a rock or tree. At last I see one which flies 
up straight from a rock eighty or one hundred 
feet, and warbles a peculiar, long, and pleasant 



306 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

strain, after the manner of the sky-lark, me- 
thinks ; and close by I see another, apparently 
a baywing (though I do not see the white on its 
tail), and it utters, while sitting, the same sub- 
dued, rather peculiar strain. • . . 

It is not important that the poet should say 
some particular thing, but that he should speak 
in harmony with nature. The tone and pitch 
of his voice is the main thing. 

It appears to me that the wisest philosophers 
I know are as foolish as Sancho Panza dream- 
ing of his island. Considering the ends they 
propose and the obstructions in their path, they 
are even. One philosopher is feeble enough 
alone ; but observe how each multiplies his diffi- 
culties, — by how many unnecessary links he 
allies himself to the existing state of things. 
He girds himself for his enterprise with fasting 
and prayer, and then, instead of pressing for- 
ward like a light-armed soldier, with the fewest 
possible hindrances, he at once hooks on to some 
immovable institution, and begins to sing and 
scratch gravel towards his objects. Why, it is 
as much as the strongest man can do decently 
to bury his friends and relations, without mak- 
ing a new world of it. But if the philosopher 
is as foolish as Sancho Panza, he is also as wise, 
and nothing so truly makes a thing so or so as 
thinking it so. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 307 

April 2, 1859. As I go down the street just 
after sunset, I hear many snipe to-night. At 
this hour, that is, in the twilight, they make a 
hovering sound high in the air over the vil- 
lages, and the inhabitants do not know what to 
refer it to. It is very easily imitated by a sort 
of shuddering with the breath. It reminds me 
of calmer nights. Hardly one in a hundred 
hears it, and perhaps not nearly so many 
know what creature makes it. Perhaps no one 
dreamed of snipe an hour ago, and the air 
seemed empty of such as they ; but as soon as 
the dusk begins, so that a bird's flight is con- 
cealed, you hear this peculiar, spirit-suggesting 
sound, now far, now near, heard through and 
above the evening din of the village. I did not 
hear one when I returned up the street half an 
hour later. 

April 3, 1841. Friends will not only live in 
harmony, but in melody. 

April 3, 1842. I can remember when I was 
more enriched by a few cheap rays of light fall- 
ing on the pond side than by this broad sunny 
day. Riches have wings, indeed. The weight 
of present woe will express the sweetness of past 
experience. When sorrow comes, how easy it 
is to remember pleasure ! When in winter the 
bees cannot make new honey, they consume the 
old. 



308 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Experience is in the head and fingers. The 
heart is inexperienced. 

I have just heard the flicker among the oaks 
on the hUlside ushering in a new dynasty. It 
is the age and youth of time. Why did nature 
set this lure for sickly mortals ? Eternity could 
not begin with more security and momentous- 
ness than the spring. The summer's eternity 
is reestablished by this note. All sights and 
sounds are seen and heard both in time and 
eternity ; and when the eternity of any sight or 
sound strikes the eye or ear, they are intoxi- 
cated with delight. 

Sometimes, as through a dim haze, we see 
objects in their eternal relations. They stand 
like Stonehenge and the Pyramids, and we 
wonder who set them up, and what for. 

The destiny of the soul can never be studied 
by the reason, for the modes of the latter are 
not ecstatic. In the wisest calculation or dem- 
onstration I but play a game with myself. I 
am not to be taken captive by myself. I can- 
not convince myself. God must convince. I 
can calculate a problem in arithmetic, but not 
any morality. Virtue is incalculable, as it is 
inestimable. Man's destiny is but virtue or 
manhood. It is wholly moral, to be learned 
only by the life of the soul. The reason, before 
it can be applied to such a subject, will have to 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 309 

fetter and restrict it. How can he, step by 
step, perform that long journey who has not 
conceived whither he is bound? How can he 
expect to perform an arduous journey without 
interruption who has no passport to the end? 
On this side of man is the actual, and on the 
other the ideal. The former is the province of 
the reason, which is even a divine light when 
directed upon that, but it cannot reach forward 
into the ideal without blindness. The moon was 
made to rule by night, but the sun to rule by 
day. Reason will be but a pale cloud like the 
moon when one ray of divine light comes to illu- 
mine the soul. 

April 3, 1852. They call that northernmost 
sea, thought to be free from ice, " Polina." 
The coldest natures, persevere with them, go 
far enough, are found to have open sea in the 
highest latitudes. 

April 3, 1853. Nothing is more saddening 
than an ineffectual, proud intercourse with those 
of whom we expect sympathy and encourage- 
ment. I repeatedly find myself drawn toward 
certain persons but to be disappointed. No 
concessions which are not radical are the least 
satisfaction. By myself I can live and thrive, 
but in the society of incompatible friends I 
starve. To cultivate their society is to cherish 
a sore which can only be healed by abandoning 



310 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

them. I cannot trust my neighbor whom I know 
any more than I can trust the law of gravitation 
and jump off the Cliffs. 

The last two Tribunes I have not looked at. 
I have no time to read newspapers. If you 
chance to live and move and have your being 
in that thin stratum in which the events which 
make the news transpire, — thinner than the 
paper on which it is printed, — then these 
things will fill the world for you. But if you 
soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot 
remember nor be reminded of them. 

p. M. To Cliffs. At Hayden's I hear hjlsa 
on two keys or notes. Heard one after the 
other ; the sounds might be mistaken for the 
varied note of one. The little croakers, too, 
are very lively there. I get close to them, and 
witness a great commotion, they half hopping 
and haK swimming about with their heads out, 
apparently in pursuit of each other, perhaps 
thirty or forty within a few square yards, and 
fifteen or twenty within one yard. There is 
not only the incessant lively croaking of many 
together, as usually heard, but a lower, hoarser, 
squirming kind of croak, perhaps from the other 
sex. As I approach nearer, they disperse and 
bury themselves in the grass at the bottom, only 
one or two remaining outstretched upon the sur- 
face; and at another step, these, too, conceal 
themselves. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 311 

AprU 3, 1856. p. m. To Hunt's Bridge. 
It is surprising how the earth on south banks 
begins to show some greenness in its russet 
cheeks in this rain and fog, — a precious emer- 
ald-green tinge, ahnost like a green mildew, the 
growth of the night, a green blush suffusing her 
cheek, heralded by twittering birds. This sight 
is no less interesting than the corresponding 
bloom and ripe blush of the fall. How encour- 
aging to perceive again that faint tinge of green 
spreading amid the russet on earth's cheeks! 
I revive with Nature. Her victory is mine. 
This is my jewelry. 

I see small flocks of robins running on the 
bared portions of the meadow ; hear the sprayey 
tinkle of the song-sparrow along the hedges. 
Hear also the squeaking notes of an advancing 
flock of redwings or grackles (am uncertain 
which make that sound), somewhere high in the 
sky. At length detect them high overhead, 
advancing northeast in loose array, with broad, 
extended front, competing with each other, 
winging their way to some northern meadow 
which they remember. The note of some is 
like the squeaking of many signs, while others 
accompany them with a steady, dry tchuh-tchuk, 

Hosmer is overhauling a vast heap of manure 
in the rear of his barn, turning the ice within 
it up to the light. Yet he asks despairingly 



312 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

wbat life is for, and says he does not expect to 
stay here long. But I have just come from 
reading Columella, who describes the same kind 
of spring look in that, to him, new spring of the 
world with hope, and I suggest to be brave and 
hopeful with nature. Hiunan life may be trans- 
itory and full of trouble, but the perennial mind 
whose survey extends from that spring to this, 
from Columella to Hosmer, is superior to change. 
I will identify myself with that which did not 
die with Columella and will not die with Hosmer. 

Coming home along the causeway, I hear a 
robin sing (though faintly) as in May. The 
road is a path, here and there shoveled through 
drifts which are considerably higher than a 
man's head on each side. 

April 3, 1858. Going down town this morn- 
ing, I am surprised by the rich strain of the 
purple finch from the elms. Three or four 
have arrived and lodged against the elms of our 
street, which runs east and west across their 
course, and they are now mingling their loud, 
rich strain with that of the tree-sparrows, rob- 
ins, bluebirds, etc. The hearing of this note 
implies some improvement in the acoustics of 
the air. It reminds me of that genial state of 
the air when the elms are in bloom. They sit 
still over the street, and make a business of 
warbling. They advertise one, surely, of some 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 818 

additional warmth and serenity. How their 
note rings over the roofs of the village I You 
wonder that even the sleepers are not awakened 
by it, to inquire who is there. And yet prob- 
ably not another in all the town observes their 
coming, and not half a dozen ever distinguish 
them in their lives. But the very mob of the 
town know the hard names of Germanians or 
Swiss families who once sang here or else- 
where. 

When I have been out thus the whole day, 
and spend the whole afternoon returning, it 
seems to me pitiful and ineffectual to be out, as 
usual, only in the afternoon, — as if you had 
come late to a feast, after your betters had done. 
The afternoon seems at best a long twilight 
after the fresh and bright forenoon. 

The gregariousness of men is their most con- 
temptible and discouraging aspect. See how 
they follow each other like sheep, not knowing 
why! Day & Martin's blacking was preferred 
by the last generation, and also is by this. 
They have not so good a reason for preferring 
this or that religion. Apparently, in ancient 
times several parties were nearly equally 
matched. They appointed a committee and 
made a compromise, agreeing to vote or believe 
so and so, and they still helplessly abide by 
that. Men are the inveterate foes of all im- 



814 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

provement. Generally speaking, they think 
more of their hen-houses than of any desirable 
heaven. If you aspire to anything better than 
polities, expect no cooperation from men. They 
will not further anything good. You must pre- 
vail of your own force, as a plant springs and 
grows by its own vitality. 

April 3, 1859. The bsBomyces is in perfec- 
tion this rainy day. I have for some weeks 
been insisting on the beauty and richness of the 
moist and saturated crust of the earth. It has 
seemed to me more attractive and living than 
ever, a very sensitive cuticle, teeming with life, 
especially in the rainy days. I have looked on 
it as the skin of a pard. And on a more close 
examination I am borne out by discovering in 
this now so bright baeomyces, and in other 
earthy lichens, and in cladonias, and also in the 
very pretty red and yellow stemmed mosses, a 
manifest sympathy with and an expression of 
the general life of the crust. This early and 
hardy cryptogamous vegetation is, as it were, a 
flowering of the crust of the earth. Lichens 
and these mosses which depend on moisture are 
now most rampant. If you examine it, this 
brown earth crust is not dead. We need a 
popular name for the baeomyces. C sug- 
gests "pink mould." Perhaps "pink shot or 
eggs " would do. . . . 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 315 

Men's minds run so much on work and money 
that the mass instantly associate all literary la- 
bor with a pecuniary reward. They are vainly 
curious to know how much money the lecturer 
or another gets for his work. They think that 
the naturalist takes so much pains to collect 
plants or animals because he is paid for it. An 
Irishman who saw me in the fields making a 
minute in my note-book took it for granted that 
I was casting up my wages, and actually in- 
quired what they came to, as if he had never 
dreamed of any other use for writing. I might 
have quoted to him that the wages of sin is 
death, as the most pertinent answer. What do 
you get for lecturing now? I am occasionally 
asked. It is the more amusing, since I only 
lecture about once a year out of my native town, 
often not at all ; so that I might, if my objects 
were merely pecuniary, give up the business. 
Once, when I was walking in Staten Island, 
looking about me, as usual, a man who saw me 
would not believe me when I told him that I 
was indeed from New England, but was not 
iooking at that region with a pecuniary view, 
— a view to speculation ; and he offered me a 
handsome bonus if I would sell his farm for 
him. 

April 4, 1839. The atmosphere of morning 
gives a healthy hue to our prospects. Disease 



816 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

is a sluggard that overtakes, never encounters 
us. We have the start each day, and may 
fairly distance him before the dew is off; but if 
we recline in the bowers of noon, he will, after 
all, come up with us. The morning dew breeds 
no cold. We enjoy a diurnal reprieve in the 
beginning of each day's creation. In the morn- 
ing we do not believe in expediency; we will 
start afresh, and have no patching, no tempo- 
rary fixtures. In the afternoon man has an 
interest in the past; his eye is divided, and he 
sees indifferently well either way. 

Drifting in a sultry day on the sluggish 
waters of the pond, I almost cease to live, and 
begin to be. A boatman stretched on the deck 
of his craft, and dallying with the noon, would 
be as apt an emblem of eternity for me as the 
serpent with his tail in his mouth. I am never 
so prone to lose my identity. I am dissolved in 
the haze. 

April 4, 1841. The rattling of the tea-kettle 
below stairs reminds me of the cow-bells I used 
to hear when berrying in the Great Fields many 
years ago, sounding distant and deep amid the 
birches. That cheap piece of tinkling brass 
which the farmer hangs about his cow's neck 
has been more to me than the tons of metal 
which are swung in the belfry. 

April 4, 1852. It is refreshing to stand on 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 317 

the face of the Cliff and see the water gliding 
over the surface of the almost perpendicular 
rock in a broad, thin sheet, pulsing over it. It 
reflects the sun for half a mile like a patch of 
snow. As you stand close by, it brings out the 
colors of the lichens like polishing or varnish. 
It is admirable regarded as a dripping fountain. 
You have lichens and moss on the surface, and 
starting saxifrage, ferns still green, and huckle- 
berry bushes in the crevices. The rocks never 
appear so diversified and cracked, as if the 
chemistry of nature were now in full force. 
Then the drops falling perpendicularly from a 
projecting rock have a pleasing geometrical 
effect. 

I see the snow lying thick on the south side 
of the Peterboro' Hills, and, though the ground 
is bare from the seashore to their base, I pre- 
sume it is covered with snow from their base to 
the icy sea. I feel the raw air, cooled by the 
snow, on my cheek. Those hills are probably 
the dividing line at present between the bare 
ground and the snow-clad ground stretching 
three thousand miles to the Saskatchewan and 
Mackenzie, and the icy sea. 

April 4, 1853. p. m. Rain, rain. To Cle- 
matis Brook via Lee's Bridge. Again I notice 
that early reddish or purplish grass that lies flat 
on the pools, like a warm blush suffusing the 



818 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

youthful face of the year. A warm, dripping 
rain heard on one's umbrella as on a snug roof, 
and on the leaves without, suggests comfort. 
We go abroad with a slow but sure content- 
ment, like turtles under their shells. We never 
feel so comfortable as when we are abroad in a 
storm with satisfaction. Our comfort is positive 
then. We are all compact, and our thoughts 
collected. We walk under the clouds and mists 
as under a roof. Now we seem to hear the 
ground a-soaking up the rain, which does not 
fall ineffectually, as on a frozen surface. We 
too are penetrated and revived by it. Robins 
still sing, and song - sparrows more or less, 
and blackbirds, and the unfailing jay screams. 
How the thirsty grass rejoices ! It has pushed 
up visibly since morning, and fields that were 
completely russet yesterday are already tinged 
with green. We rejoice with the grass. I hear 
the hollow sound of drops falling into the water 
imder Hubbard's Bridge, and each one makes a 
conspicuous bubble which is floated down stream. 
Instead of ripples, there are a myriad dimples 
in the stream. The lichens remember the sea 
to-day; the usually dry cladonias which are so 
crisp under the feet are full of moist vigor. 
The rocks speak, and tell the tales inscribed on 
them. Their inscriptions are brought out. I 
pause to study their geography. At Conantum 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 319 

End I saw a red-tailed hawk launcli himself away 
from an oak by the pond at my approach, — a 
heavy flyer, flapping even like the great bittern 
at first. Heavy forward. After turning Lee's 
Cliff, I heard, methought, more birds singing 
even than in fair weather, — tree-sparrows, 
whose song has the character of the canary's, 
Fringilla hiemalis (chill-till), the sweet strains 
of the fox-colored sparrow, song-sparrows, a 
nuthatch, jays, crows, bluebirds, robins, and a 
large congregation of blackbirds. They sud- 
denly alight with great din in a stubble field 
just over the wall, not perceiving me and my 
umbrella behind the pitch-pines, and there feed 
silently. Then, getting uneasy or anxious, they 
fly up on to an apple-tree, where, being reas- 
sured, commences a rich but deafening concert, 
— o-gurgle-ee-e^ o-gurgle-ee-e^ — s(Hne of the 
most liquid notes ever heard, as if produced by 
some of the water of the Pierian spring flowing 
through a kind of musical water pipe, and at 
the same time setting in motion a multitude of 
fine vibrating metallic springs. Like a shep- 
herd merely meditating most enrapturing glees 
on such a water pipe. A more liquid bagpipe 
or clarinet, immersed like bubbles in a thou- 
sand sprayey notes, the bubbles half lost in the 
spray. When I show myself, away they go 
with a loud, harsh charr-charr-r^ At first I had 



820 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

heard an inundation of blackbirds approacliing, 
some beating time with a loud chuck - chuck, 
while the rest played a hurried, gurgling fugue. 

A rainy day is to the walker in solitude and 
retirement like the night. Few travelers are 
about, and they half hidden under umbrellas 
and confined to the highways. The thoughts 
run in a different channel from usual. It is 
somewhat like the dark day, it is a light night. 
How cheerful the roar of a brook swollen by the 
rain, especially if there is no sound of the mill 
in it I A woodcock went off from the shore of 
Clematis or Nightshade Pond with a few slight, 
rapid sounds like a watchman's rattle half re- 
volved. 

April 4, 1855. p. m. To Clematis Brook 
via Lee's. A pleasant day; growing warmer; 
a slight haze. Now the hedges and apple-trees 
are alive with fox-colored sparrows all over the 
town, and their imperfect strains are occasion- 
ally heard. 

It is a fine air, but more than tempered by 
the snow in the northwest. All the earth is 
bright ; the very pines glisten, and the water is 
a bright blue. A gull is circling round Fair 
Haven Pond, seen white against the woods and 
hillsides, looking as if it would dive for a fish 
every moment, and occasionally resting on the 
ice. The water above Lee's Bridge is all alive 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 821 

With ducks. There are many flocks of eight or 
ten together, their black heads and white 
breasts seen above the water, — more o£ them 
than I have seen before this season, — and a 
gull with its whole body above the water, per- 
haps standing where it is shallow. 

Not only are the evergreens brighter, but the 
pools, as that upland one behind Lee's, the ice 
as well as snow about their edges being com- 
pletely melted, have a peculiarly warm and 
bright April look, as if ready to be inhabited 
by frogs. . . . 

Returning from Mount Misery, the pond and 
river each presented a fine warm view. The 
slight haze which, in a warmer day at this sea- 
son, softens the rough surface which the winter 
has left, and fills the copses seemingly with life, 
made the landscape remarkably fair. There is 
a remarkable variety in the view at present 
from this summit. The sun feels as warm as 
in June on my ear. Half a mile off, in front, 
is this elysian water, high over which two wilcj 
ducks are winging their rapid flight eastward 
through the bright air. On each side and be- 
yond, the earth is clad with a warm russet, more 
pleasing perhaps than green; and far beyond 
all, in the northwest horizon, my eye rests on a 
range of snow-covered mountains glistening in 
the sun. 



322 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

April 4, 1860. The birds are eager to sing 
as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has 
held them in cheek. 

April 5, 1841. This long series of desultory 
mornings does not tarnish the brightness of the 
prospective days. Surely faith is not dead. 
Wood, water, earth, air are essentially what 
they are. Only society has degenerated. This 
lament for a golden age is only a lament for 
golden men. 

April 5, 1854. This morning heard a famil- 
iar twittering over the house; looked up and 
saw white-bellied swallows. Another saw them 
yesterday. Surveying all day. In Carlisle. 
I have taken off my outside coat, perhaps for 
the first time, and hung it on a tree. The 
zephyr is positively agreeable on my cheek. I 
am thinking what an elysian day it is, and 
how I seem always to be keeping the flocks of 
Admetus such days, that is my luck, when I 
hear a single short stertorous croak from some 
pool half filled with dry leaves. You may see 
anything now, — the buff -edged butterfly and 
many hawks along the meadow; and hark! 
while I was writing down that field note, the 
shrill peep of the hylodes was borne to me from 
afar through the woods. 

I rode with my employer a dozen miles to- 
day, keeping a profound silence almost all the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 323 

way, as the most simple and natural course. I 
treated him simply as if he had bronchitis and 
could not speak, just as I would a sick man, a 
crazy man, or an idiot. The disease was only 
an unconquerable stiffness in a well-meaning 
and sensible man. 

Begin to look off the hills and see the land- 
scape again through a slight haze, with warm 
wind on the cheek. 

April 5, 1855. 9 a. m. To Sudbury line 
by boat. ... It is a smooth April-morning 
water, and many sportsmen are out in their 
boats. I see a pleasure boat on the smooth 
surface away by the Rock, resting lightly as a 
feather in the air. Scare up a snipe close to 
the water's edge, and soon after a hen-hawk 
from the Clam-shell oaks. The last looks 
larger on his perch than flying. The snipe, 
too, then, like crows, robins, blackbirds, and 
hens, is found near the water-side where is the 
first spring (alders, white maples, etc., etc.); 
and there, too, especially, are heard the song 
and tree sparrows and pewees; and even the 
hen-hawk, at this season, haunts these for his 
prey. Inland, the groves are almost completely 
silent as yet. The concert of song and tree 
sparrows at Willow Row is now very full, and 
their different notes are completely mingled. 
See a single white-bellied swallow dashing over 



324 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

the river. He, too, is attracted by the early 
insects that begin to be seen over the water. 
It being Fast Day, we on the v^rater hear the 
loud and musical sound of bells ringing for 
church in the surrounding towns. 

April 6, 1853. 6 a. m. To Cliffs. The 
robin is the singer at present, such is its power 
and universality, being heard both in garden 
and wood. Morning and evening he does not 
fail, perched on some elm or the like, and in 
rainy days it is one long morning or evening. 
The song-sparrow is still more universal, but 
not so powerful. The lark, too, is equally 
constant morning and evening, but confined to 
certain localities, as is the blackbird to some 
extent. The bluebird, with feebler but not 
less sweet warbling, helps fill the air, and the 
phebe does her part. The tree-sparrow, Frin* 
gUla hiemalis^ and fox-colored sparrows make 
the meadow-sides or gardens where they are 
flitting vocal, the first with its canary-like 
twittering, the second with its lively ringing 
trills or jingle. The third is a very sweet and 
more powerful singer, which would be memor- 
able if we heard him long enough. The wood* 
pecker's tapping, though not musical, suggests 
pleasant associations in the cool morning, is 
inspiriting, enlivening. I hear no hylas nor 
croakers in the morning. Is it too cool for 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 325 

them? The gray branches of the oaks, which 
have lost still more of their leaves, seen against 
the pines when the sun is rising and falling on 
them, how rich and interesting! Hear the 
faint, swelling, far-off beat of a partridge. 

p. M. To Second Division Brook. . . . All 
along on the south side of this [Clam-shell] hill, 
on the edge of the meadow, the air resounds 
with the hum of honey-bees, attracted by the 
flower of the skunk-cabbage. I first heard the 
fine, peculiarly sharp hum of the honey-bee 
before I thought of them. Some hummed 
hollowly within the spathe, perchance to give 
notice to their fellows that the plant was occu- 
pied, for they repeatedly looked in and backed 
out on finding another. It was surprising to 
see them directed by their instincts to these 
localities (while the earth has still but a wintry 
aspect, so far as vegetation is concerned), buzz 
around some obscure spathe close to the ground, 
well knowing what they are about, then alight 
and enter. As the plants were very numerous 
for thirty or forty rods, there must have been 
some hundreds, at least, of bees there at once. 
I watched many when they entered and came 
out, and they all had little yellow pellets of 
pollen at their thighs. As the skunk-cabbage 
comes out before the willow, it is probable that 
the former is the first flower they visit. It is 



326 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

the more surprising, as the flower is, for the 
most paxt, invisible within the spathe. Some 
of these spathes are now quite large and twisted 
up like cows' horns, not curved over, as usual. 
Commonly they make a pretty little crypt or 
shrine for the flower. Lucky that this flower 
does not flavor their honey. 

One cowslip, though it shows the. yellow, is 
not fairly out, but will be by to-morrow. How 
they improve their time. Not a moment of 
sunshine is lost. One thing I may depend 
on, there has been no idling with the flowers. 
Nature loses not a moment, takes no vacation. 
They advance as steadily as a clock. These 
plants, now protected by the water, are just 
peeping forth. I should not be surprised to 
find that they drew in their heads in a frosty 
night. 

Returning. Saw a pigeon woodpecker flash 
away, showing the rich golden underside of its 
glancing wings and the large whitish spot on its 
back, and presently I heard its familiar, long- 
repeated, loud note, almost as familiar as that 
of a barn-door fowl, which it somewhat resem- 
bles. The robins, too, now toward sunset, 
perched on the old apple - trees in Tarbel's 
orchard, twirl forth their evening lays un- 
weariedly. . . . To-night, for the first time, I 
hear the hylas in full blast. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 827 

April 6, 1854. A still warmer day than 
yesterday, a warm, moist, rain-smelling, west 
wind. I am surprised to find so much of the 
white maples already out. The light-colored 
stamens show some rods. Probably they began 
as early as day before yesterday. They resound 
with the hum of honey-bees heard a dozen rods 
off, and you see thousands of them about the 
flowers against the sky. They know where to 
look for the white maple, and when. Their 
susurrus carries me forward some months to- 
ward summer. I was reminded before of those 
still, warm, summer noons when the breams' 
nests are left dry, and the fishes retreat from 
the shallows into the cooler depths, and the cows 
stand up to their bellies m the rivers. . . . 
The alders, both kinds, just above the hem- 
locks, have just begun to shed their pollen. 
They are hardly as forward as the white maples, 
but they are not in so warm a position as some. 
... In clearing out the Assabet spring, dis- 
turbed two iHuall speckled (palustris) frogs, just 
beginning to move. . . . Heard the snipe over 
the meadows this evening. Probably was to be 
heard for a night or two. Sounds on different 
keys, as if approaching or receding over the 
meadows recently become bare. 

Ajml 6, 1865. ... I go up the Assabet in 
my boat. The blackbirds have now begun to 



328 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

frequent the water's edge in the meadow, the 
ice being sufficiently out. The aspect of April 
waters, smooth and commonly high, before 
many flowers (none yet) or any leafing, while 
the landscape is still russet, and frogs are just 
awakening, is peculiar. It began yesterday. 
A very few white - maple stamens stand out 
already loosely enough to blow in the wind, and 
some alder catkins look almost ready to shed 
pollen. On the hillsides I smell the dried 
leaves, and hear a few flies buzzing over them. 
The banks of the river are alive with song-spar- 
rows and tree-sparrows. They now sing in 
advance of vegetation, as the flowers will blos- 
som. Those slight tinkling, twittering sounds, 
called the singing of birds, have come to enliven 
the bare twigs before the buds show any signs 
of starting. . . . You can hear all day, from 
time to time, in any part of the village, the 
sound of a gun fired at ducks. Yesterday I 
was wishing that I could find a dead duck float- 
ing in the water, as I had found muskrats and 
a hare, and now I see something bright and re- 
flecting the light from the edge of the alders 
five or six. rods off. Can it be a duck ? I can 
hardly believe my eyes. I am near enough to 
see its green head and neck. I am delighted 
to find a perfect specimen of the JUergus mer^ 
gansery or goosander, undoubtedly shot yester« 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS S29 

day by the Fast Day sportsmen. I take a 
small flattened shot from its wing, flattened 
against the wing bone, apparently. The wing 
is broken, and it is shot through the head. It 
is a perfectly fresh and very beautiful bird. As 
Ir.Li^Ig.t,igh.„f?.sl„.g,.k„derve,. 
milion bill (color of red sealing-wax), and its 
clean, bright orange legs and feet, and then of 
its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white 
breast and belly, tinged with a faint salmon, or 
a delicate buff inclining to salmon. ... I 
afterwards took three small shot from it which 
were flattened against the bill's base and per- 
haps the quills' shafts. This, according to 
Wilson, is one of the mergansers or fisher- 
ducks, of which there are nine or ten species, 
and we have four in America. It is the largest 
of these four, . . . called water pheasant, shel- 
drake, fisherman diver, etc., as well as goosan- 
der. . . . My bird is twenty-five and seven 
eighths inches long and thirty -five in alar extent. 
From point of wing to end of primaries, eleven 
inches. It is a great diver, and does not mind 
the cold. It appears admirably adapted for 
diving and swimming. Its body is flat, and its 
tail short, flat, compact, and wedge-shaped. Its 
eyes peer out from a slight slit or semicircle in 
the skin of the head, and its legs are flat and 
thin in one direction, and the toes shut up com- 



330 EARLY SPRING IX MASSACHUSETTS 

pactlj so as to create die least friction wlien 
drawing them fcH-ward^ but dieir broad webs 
spread three inches and a half when they take a 
stiroke. The web is extended three eighths of an 
inch beyond die inner toe of each foot. Iliere 
are rery oonspicooos bbu;k teeth, like serrations, 
along the edges of its bill, and this also is 
roughened, so that it may hold its prey secnrely. 
The breast appeared quite dry when I raised it 
from the water. The head and neck are, as 
Wilson says, black, glossed with green, but the 
lower part of the neck pure white, and these 
colors bound on each other so abruptly that one 
appears to be sewed on to the other. It is a 
perfect wedge from the middle of its body to 
the end of its tail, is only three and one fourth 
inches deep from back to breast at the thickest 
part, while the greatest breadth horizontally (at 
the base of the legs) is five inches and a half. 
I suspect that I have seen near one hundred of 
these birds this spring, but I never got so near 
one before. . . . Yarrell says it is the largest 
of the British mergansers, is a winter visitor, 
though a few breed in the north of Britain ; are 
rare in the southern counties. 

April 7, 1839. The tediousness and detail 
of execution never occur to the genius project- 
ing; it always antedates the completion of its 
work. It condescends to give time a few hours 
to do its bidding in. 



HARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 331 

Most have sufficient contempt for wliat is 
mean to resolve that they wOl abstain from it, 
and a few, virtue enough to abide by their res- 
olution, but not often does one attain to such 
lofty contempt as to require no resolution to be 
made. 

ApHl 7, 1841. My life will wait for nobody, 
but is being matured still irresistibly while I go 
about the streets, and chaffer with this man and 
that to secure it a living. It will cut its own 
channel, like the moimtain stream, which, by 
the longest ridges and by level prairies, is not 
kept from the sea finaUy. So flows a man's 
Ufe, and wiU reach the sea water, if not by an 
earthly channel, yet in dew and rain, overleap- 
ing all barriers, with rainbows to aimounce its 
victory. It can wind as cunningly and unerr- 
ingly as water that seeks its level, and shall I 
complain if the gods make it meander? This 
staying to buy me a farm is as if the Mississippi 
should stop to chaffer with a clam-shell. 

If from yoTiP price ye will not swerve, 
Why then I 'U think the gods reserve 
A greater bargain there above, 
Out of their superabundant love 
Have meantime better for me cared, 
And so will get my stock prepared, 
And sow my seed broadcast in |ur. 
Certain to reap my harvest there. 

April 7, 1863. 10 A. M. Down the river 



332 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

in boat to Bedford. . . . How handsome the 
river from those hills, southwest over the Great 
Meadows, a sheet of sparkling, molten silver, 
with broad lagoons parted from it by curving 
lines of low bushes; to the right or northward, 
now at 2 or 3 p. M., a dark blue, with small, 
smooth, Ught edgings, firm plating, under the 
lee of the shore. ... As we stand on Naw- 
shawtuck at 5 P. M., looking over the meadows, 
I doubt if there is a town more adorned by its 
river than ours. Now, while the sun is low in 
the west, the northeasterly water is of a pecu- 
liarly ethereal, light blue, more beautiful than 
the sky, and this broad water, with innumera- 
ble bays and inlets running up into the land on 
either side, and often divided by bridges and 
causeways, as if it were the very essence and 
richness of the heavens distilled and poured 
upon the earth, contrasting with the clear rus- 
set land and the paler sky from which it has 
been subtracted ; nothing can be more elysian. 
Is not the blue more ethereal when the sun is at 
this angle? The river is but a long chain of 
flooded meadows. I think our most distant, 
extensive low horizon must be that northeast 
from this hill over Ball's Hill. It is down the 
river valley partly, at least, toward the Merri- 
mack, as it should be. 

April 7, 1854. 6 a. m. Down railroad to 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 333 

Cliffs. The Populus tremuloides in a day or 
two. The hazel stigmas are well out and the 
catkins loose, but no pollen shed yet. On the 
Cliff I find, after long and careful search, one 
sedge above the rocks, low amid the withered 
blades of last year, out, its little yellow beard 
amid the dry blades and a few green ones, 
the first herbaceous flowering I have detected. 
Fair Haven is completely open. 

April 7, 1855. At six this morning to 
Clam-shell. . . . See thirty or forty goldfinches 
in a dashing flock, in all respects, notes and all, 
like lesser redpolls. . . • On the trees and on 
the railroad bank there is a general twittering 
and an occasional mew. Then they alight on 
the ground to feed, along with the Fringilla 
hiemalis and fox-colored sparrows. They are 
merely olivaceous above, dark about the base of 
the bill, but bright lemon-yellow in a semicircle 
on the breast, black wings and tail, with white 
bar on wings and white vanes to tail. I never 
saw them here so early before, or probably one 
or two olivaceous birds I have seen and heard 
of in other years were this. 

April 7, 1860. The purple flnch (if not be- 
fore). This is the Sana halecina day, awaken- 
ing of the meadows, though not very warm. 
The thermometer in Boston is said to be 49°+- 
Probably, then, when it is about 50°+ at this 



834 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

season, the river being low, they are to be heajrd 
in calm places. Fishes now lie up abundantly 
in shallow water in the sun; pickerel, and I 
see several bream. What was lately motionless 
and lifeless ice is a transparent liquid, in which 
the stately pickerel moves along. A novel 
sight is that of the first bream that has come 
forth from I know not what hibemaculum, 
moving gently over the still, brown river bot- 
tom where scarcely a weed has started. Water 
is as yet only melted ice, or like that of Novem- 
ber, which is ready to become ice. 

April 8, 1840. How shall I help myself? 
By withdrawing into the garret and associating 
with spiders and mice, determining to meet 
myself face to face sooner or later. Com- 
pletely silent and attentive I will be this hour 
and the next and forever. The most positive 
life that history notices has been a constant 
retiring out of life, a wiping one's hands of it, 
seeing how mean it is, and having nothing to 
do with it. 

April 8, 1841. Friends are the ancient and 
honorable of the earth. The oldest men did 
not begin friendship. It is older than Hindo- 
stan and the Chinese Empire. How long has 
it been cultivated, and still it is the staple 
article. It is a divine league struck forever. 
Warm days only bring it out to the surface. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 335 

There is a friendliness between the sun and the 
earth in pleasant weather. The gray content 
of the land is its color. 

You can tell what another's suspicions are by 
what you feel forced to become. You will 
wear a new character, like a strange habit, in 
his presence. 

April 8, 1852. ... I notice the alder in 
blossom, its reddish-brown catkins now length- 
ened and loose. What mean the apparently 
younger small red [catkins?]? They are the 
female aments. 

April 8, 1853. . . . Saw and heard my 
smaU pine warbler shaking out his trills or 
jingle, even like money coming to its bearing. 
They appear so much the smaller from perching 
high in the tops of white pines, and flitting 
from tree to tree at that height. Is not my 
night warbler the white-eyed vireo? not yet 
here. 

April 8, 1854. ... At Nut Meadow Brook 
saw, or rather heard, a muskrat plunge into the 
brook before me, and saw him endeavoring in 
vain to bury himself in the sandy bottom, look- 
ing like an amphibious animal. I stooped and, 
taking him by the tail, which projected, tossed 
him ashore. He did not lose the points of the 
compass, but turned directly to the brook again, 
though it was toward me, and, plunging in. 



836 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

buried himself in the mud, and that was the last 
I saw of him. Saw a large bird sail along over 
the edge of Wheeler's cranberry meadow just 
below Fair Haven, which I at first thought a 
gull. But with my glass I found it appeared 
like a hawk, and had a perfectly white head and 
tail, and broad black or blackish wings. It 
sailed and circled along over the low cliff, and 
the crows dived at it in the field of my glass. 
I saw it well both above and beneath as it 
turned, and then it passed off to hover over the 
cliffs at a greater height. It was undoubtedly 
a white-headed eagle, though to the eye it was 
but a large hawk. 

I find that I can criticise my composition best 
when I stand at a little distance from it, when 
I do not see it, for instance. I make a little 
chapter of contents, which enables me to recall 
it page by page to my mind, and judge it more 
impartially when my manuscript is out of the 
way. The distraction of surveying enables me 
rapidly to take new points of view. A day or 
two of surveying is equal to a journey. 

Some poets mature early and die young. 
Their fruits have a delicious flavor like straw- 
berries, but do not keep till fall or winter. 
Others are slower in coming to their growth. 
Their fruits may be less delicious, but are a 
more lasting food, and are so hardened by the 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 337 

sun of summer and the coolness of autumn that 
they keep sound over winter. 

April 8, 1859. As I stood by the foot of a 
middling-sized white pine thie other day, on 
Fair Haven Hill, one of the very windy days, I 
felt the ground rise and fall under my feet, 
being lifted by the roots of the pine, which was 
waving in the wind, so loosely are they planted. 

What a pitiful business is the fur trade, 
which has been pursued now for so many ages, 
for so many years, by famous companies, 
which enjoy a profitable monopoly, and control 
a large part of the earth's surface. Unwear- 
iedly they pursue and ferret out small animals 
by the aid of all the loafing class, tempted by 
rum and money, that they may rob some little 
fellow-creature of its coat to adorn or thicken 
their own, that they may get a fashionable cov- 
ering in which to hide their heads, or a suitable 
robe in which to dispense justice to their fellow- 
men/ Regarded from the philosopher's point 
of view it is precisely on a level with rag and 
bone picking in the streets of cities. The In- 
dian led a more respectable life before he was 
tempted to debase himself so much by the white 
man. Think how many musquash and weasel 
skins the Hudson's Bay Company pile up an- 
nually in their warehouses, leaving the bare red 
carcasses on the banks of the streams through- 



838 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

out all British America; and this it is chiefly 
which makes it British America. It is the 
place where Great Britain goes a-mousing. 
When we see men and boys spend their time 
shooting and trapping musquash and mink, we 
cannot but have a poorer opinion of them, un- 
less we thought meanly of them before. Yet 
the world is imposed on by the fame of the 
Hudson Bay and Northwest Fur Companies, 
who are only so many partners, more or less, in 
the same sort of business, with thousands of 
just such loafing men and boys in their service 
to abet them. On the one side is the Hudson 
Bay Company, on the other the company of 
scavengers who clear the sewers of Paris of 
their vermin. There is a good excuse for smok- 
ing out or poisoning rats which infest the house, 
but when they are as far off as Hudson's Bay, 
I think that we had better let them alone. To 
such an extent do time and distance, and our 
imaginations, consecrate at last not only the 
most ordinary, but even the vilest pursuits. 
The efforts of legislation from time to time to 
stem the torrent are significant, as showing that 
there is some sense and conscience left, but 
they are insignificant in their effects. • • . 

It will not do to be thoughtless with regard 
to any of our valuables or properly. When 
you get to Europe you will meet the most ten- 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 339 

der-hearted and delicately bred lady, perhaps 
the President of the Anti-Slavery Society, or 
of that for the encouragement of humanity to 
animals, marching or presiding with the scales 
from a tortoise's back, obtained by laying live 
coals on it to make them curl up, stuck in her 
hair, rat - skins fitting as close to her fingers 
as erst to the rats; and her cloak, perchance, 
adorned with the spoils of a hundred skunks. 
Could she not wear other armor in the war of 
humanity? 

Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, 
in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly 
warm in perfectly sheltered places where the 
sun shines, and so it always is in April. The 
cold wind from the northwest seems distinct 
and separable from the air here warmed by the 
sun, and when I sit in some warm and sheltered 
hollow in the woods, I feel the cold currents 
drop into it occasionally, just as they are seen 
to ripple a small lake in such a situation from 
time to time. 

The epigsea is not quite out. The earliest 
peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are 
epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and (by the first 
of May) Viola pedata. These grow quite in the 
woods amid dry leaves, nor do they depend so 
much on water as the very earliest flowers. I 
am perhaps more surprised by the growth of the 



340 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

Viola pedata leaves by the side of paths amid 
the shrub oaks, and half covered with oak 
leaves, than by any other growth, the situation 
is so dry and the surrounding bushes so appar- 
ently lifeless. 

April 9, 1841. The brave man does not 
mind the call of the trumpet, nor hear the idle 
clashing of swords without, for the infinite din 
within. War is but a training compared with 
the active service of his peace< Is he not at 
war? Does he not resist the ocean swell within 
him, and walk as gently as the summer's sea? 
Would you have him parade in uniform and 
manoeuvre men, whose equanimity is his uni- 
form, and who is himself manoeuvred ? 

April 9, 1853. p. m. To Second Division. 
The chipping sparrow, with its ashy white 
breast, white streak over eye, and undivided 
chestnut crown, holds up its head and pours 
forth its che che che cTve che che. . . . Saw a 
pine warbler, by ventriloquism sounding further 
off than it was, which was seven or eight feet, 
hopping and flitting from twig to twig, appar- 
ently picking the small flies at and about the 
base of the needles at the extremities of the 
twigs. ... A warm and hazy, but breezy day. 
The sound of the laborers striking the iron nails 
of the railroad with their sledges is as in the 
sultry days of siunmer, — resounds, as it were. 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 341 

from the hazy sky as from a roof, a more con- 
fined, and in that sense more domestic, sound, 
echoing along between the earth and the low 
heavens. The same strokes would produce a 
very different sound in the winter. . . . Beyond 
the desert, hear the hooting owl, which, as for- 
merly, I at first mistook for the hounding of a 
dog, a squealing sound followed by hoo hoo hoo 
deliberately, and particularly sonorous and ring- 
ing. This at 2 p. M. . . . 

The cowslips are well out, the first conspic- 
uous herbaceous flower, for that of the skunk- 
cabbage is concealed in its spathe. 

April 9, 1855. 5J a. m. To red bridge 
just before sunrise. . . . Hear the coarse, 
rasping cluck or chatter of crow blackbirds, and 
distinguish their long, broad tails. Wilson 
says that the only note of the rusty grackle is a 
cluck, though he is told that at Hudson's Bay 
at the breeding time they sing with a fine note. 
Here they utter not only a cluck, but a fine 
shrill whistle. They cover the top of a tree 
now, and their concert is of this character. 
They all seem laboring together to get out a 
clear strain, as it were wetting their whistles 
against their arrival at Hudson's Bay. They 
begin, as it were, by disgorging or spitting it 
out like so much tow, from a full throat, and 
^ conclude with a dear, fine, shrill, ear-piercing 



342 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

whistle. Then away they go, all chattering to- 
gether. 

April 9, 1858. ... I doubt if men do ever 
simply and naturally glorify God in the ordi- 
nary sense, but it is remarkable how sincerely 
in all ages they glorify nature. The praising 
of Aurora, for instance, under some form in all 
ages is obedience to as irresistible an instinct as 
that which impels the frogs to peep. 

April 9, 1859. p. M. . . . We go seeking 
the south sides of hills and woods, or deep hol- 
lows to walk in, this cold and blustering day. 
We sit by the side of little Goose Pond to 
watch the ripples on it. Now it is merely 
smooth, and then there drops down upon it, 
deep as it lies amid the hills, a sharp and nar- 
row blast of the icy north wind careering above, 
striking it perhaps by a point or an edge, and 
swiftly spreading along it, making a dark blue 
ripple. Now four or five windy bolts, sharp or 
blunt, strike it at once and spread different 
ways. The boisterous but playful north wind 
evidently stoops from a considerable height to 
dally with this fair pool which it discerns be- 
neath. You could sit there and watch these 
blue shadows playing over the surface like light 
and shade on changeable silk, for hours. It 
reminds me, too, of swift Camilla on a field of 
grain. The wind often touches the water only 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 343 

by the finest points or edges. It is thus when 
you look in some measure from the sun, but if 
you move round so as to come more nearly 
opposite to him, then these dark blue ripples 
are all sparkles too bright to look at, for now 
you see the sides of the wavelets which reflect 
the sun to you. . . . Watching the ripples fall 
and dart across the surface of low-lying and 
small woodland lakes is one of the amusements 
of these windy March and April days. It is 
only on small lakes deep sunk in hollows in the 
woods that you can see or study them these days, 
for the winds sweep over the whole breadth of 
larger lakes incessantly, but they only touch 
these sheltered lakelets by fine points and edges 
from time to time. 

And then there is such a fiddling in the 
woods, such a viol-creaking of bough on bough, 
that you would think music was being born 
again, as in the days of Orpheus. Orpheus and 
Apollo are certainly there taking lessons; ay, 
and the jay and the blackbird, too, learn now 
where they stole their "thunder." They are, 
perforce, silent, meditating new strains. 

When the playful breeze drops on the pool, 
it springs to right and left quick as a kitten 
playing with dead leaves, clapping her paw 
on them. . . . These ripple lakes lie now in 
the midst of mostly bare brown or tawny dry 



844 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

wood-lands, themselves the most living objects. 
They may say to the first woodland flowers, 
We played with the north winds here before 
you were bom. 

April 10, 1841. How much virtue there is 
in simply seeing. We may almost say that the 
hero has striven in vain for his preeminency, if 
the student oversees him. The woman who sits 
in the house and sees is a match for a stirring 
captain. Those still, piercing eyes, as faith- 
fully exercised as their talent, will keep her 
even with Alexander or Shakespeare. They 
may go to Asia with parade, or to fairyland, 
but not beyond her ray. We are as much as 
we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The 
hands only serve the eyes. The farthest blue 
streak in the horizon I can see, I may reach 
before many sunsets. What I saw alters not. 
In my night when I wander, it is still steadfast 
as the star which the sailor steers by. 

Whoever has had one thought quite lonely, 
and could contentedly digest that, knowing that 
none could accept it, may rise to the heights of 
humanity and overlook all living men as from a 
pinnacle. Speech never made man master of 
men, but the eloquently refraining from it. 

April 10, 1853. . . . The saxifrage is be- 
ginning to be abundant, elevating its flowers 
somewhat, pure trustful white amid its pretty 



) 
1 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 345 

notched and reddish cup of leaves. The whit© 
saxifrage is a response from earth to the in- 
creased light of the year ; the yellow crowfoot, 
to the increased heat of the sun. . . . 

When the farmer cleans out his ditches, I 
mourn the loss of many a flower which he calls 
a weed. The main charm about the lower 
road, just beyond the bridge, to me has been in 
the little grove of locusts, sallows, birches, etc., 
which has sprung up on the bank as you rise 
the hill. Yesterday I saw a man who is build- 
ing a house near by cutting them down. Find- 
ing he was going to cut them all, I said if I 
were in his place I would not have them cut for 
a hundred dollars. "Why," said he, "tiiey 
are nothing but a parcel of prickly bushes and 
are not worth anything. I 'm going to build 
a new wall here." And so to ornament the 
approach to his house he substituted a bare 
ugly wall for an interesting grove. 

April 10, 1854. April rain. How sure a 
rain is to bring the tree-sparrows into the yard, 
to sing sweetly, canary-like. 

I bought me a spyglass some weeks since. 
I buy but few things, and those not till long 
after I begin to want them, so that when I do 
get them I am prepared to make a perfect use 
of them and extract their whole sweetness. 

April 11, 1841. A greater baldness my life 



846 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHC/SSTTS 

seeks, as the crest of some bare hill, which 
towns and cities do not afford. I want a di- 
recter relation with the sun. 

April 11, 1852. ... The sight of Nut 
Meadow Brook in Brown's land reminds me 
that the attractiveness of a brook depends much 
on the character of its bottom. I love just now 
to see one flowing through soft sand like this, 
where it wears a deep but irregular channel, 
now wider and shallower with distinct ripple 
marks, now shelving off suddenly to indistinct 
depths, meandering as well up and down as 
from side to side, deepest where narrowest, and 
ever gullying under this bank or that, its bot- 
tom lifted up to one side or the other, the cur* 
rent inclining to one side. I stop to look at 
the circular shadows of the dimples, over the 
yellow sand, and the dark brown clams on their 
edges in the sand at the bottom. (I hear the 
sound of the piano below as I write this, and 
feel as if the winter m me were at length begin- 
ning to thaw, for my spring has been even more 
backward than nature's. For a month past life 
has been a thing incredible to me. None but 
the kind gods can make me sane. If only they 
will let their south winds blow on me. I ask 
to be melted. You can only ask of the metals 
that they be tender to the fire that melts thenu 
To naught else can they be tender.) 



EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 347 

The sweet flags are now starting up under 
water two inches high, and minnows dart. 

A pure brook is a very beautiful object to 
study miiiutely. It will hes^ the closest in- 
spection, even to the fine air-bubbles, li^e 
minute globules of quicksilver, th^t lie on its 
bottom. The minute particles or spangles of 
golden mica in these sands, when the sun shines 
on them, remind one of the golden sands we 
read of. Everything is washed clean and 
bright, and the water is the best glass through 
which to see it. . . . 

If I am too cold for human friendship, I 
trust I shall not soon be too cold for natural 
influences. It appears to be a law that you 
cannot have a deep sympathy with both man 
and nature. Those qualities which bring you 
near to the one estrange you from the other. . . . 

Every man will be a poet if he can, otherwise 
a philosopher or man of science. This proves 
the superiority of the poet. 

It is hard for a man to take money from his 
friends for any service. This suggests how all 
men should be related. 

Ah! when a man has traveled, and robbed 
the horizon of his native fields of its mystery 
and poetry, its indefinite promise, tarnished 
the blue of distant mountains with his feet, 
when he has done this, he may begin to think 



348 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS 

of another world. What is this longer to 
him? • . . 

At what an expense any valuable work is 
performed! — at the expense of a lifel If 
you do one thing well, what else are you good 
for meanwhile? 



INDEX 



Abner Battriok's Hill, 20, 66, 126. 

Actions, 139. 

Afternoon, inferior to forenoon, 313. 

Agamemnon, 47. 

Age. advancing, 2, 284. 

Agriculture, 36. 

Air, 37, 272. 

Alauda alpestrla (shore lark), 228. 

Alders, 213, 297, 327, 336. 

Alg», 189. 

Alternation, 130. 

Amusement, 13. 

Anacreon, 1, 172. 

Andromeda, panioled, 6. 

Andromeda Ponds, 96. 

Anemone, 339. 

Animals, the larger and wilder, 216 ; 

unworthily described from dead 

specimens, 204. 
Anursnack, 80. 
April, rain, 345; sunshine, 339; 

waters, 328. 
Arborescence, of plants, 120. 
Argument, 66. 
Arrowheads, 39, 132, 266. 
Artist, the, 231. 
Arvida Emmonsii (Mub leuoopns), 

130 
Aspen (Populus), 34, 96, 121, 212, 

333. 
Assabet River, 234, 260, 296, 327. 
Assabet Spring, 327. 
Aster undulatus, 89. 
Asters, 89, 
Awakening, a true, 201. 

Ball^s Hill, 124, 163, 164, 166. 
Barberry, 6. 
Bare Hm, 294. 
Bay wings, 306, 306. 
Bears, 104. 
Beeches, the, 63. 
Bees, 166, 195, 296, 326, 327. 
Being, the explainer, 9. 
Birches, their seed, 40. 
Birds, of the winter, 31; of early 
March, 112. 



Bittern Cmr, 316^ 27& 

Blackbird, 43, 74, 91, 123, 130, 161. 
164, 170, 180, 297, 299, 311, 324. 
341. 

Bluebird, 3, 27, 33, 39, 42, 43, 112, 
140, 169, 167, 169, 299, 319. 

Blue curls, 136. 

Boarding, 48. 

Books, and nature, 137; author** 
chancter reflected in, 22; flow 
and sequence in, 188 ; good books 
and sunshine, 10; government 
•eieutiflc repcnrts, 6 vihistoiies, 175 ; 

Sopular, 204 ; scientific, 212 ; wil- 
emess of, 148. 
Botanizing. 120i 
Bream, 334. 
Brook, 101, 33& 
BcAybles. reflections from, 178. 
Buds, 64. 
Butterfly, small red, 298; buff-edged, 

263, 304, ^22. 
Buzzard, shott-winged, 260. 

0. Miles road, 104. 

Caltha palustris (marsh marigold, or 

cowslip), 62, 104, 227, 277, ^6, 

341. 
Oambridge, its library, 148. 
Cannon baUs, 292. 
Cap, of woodobuck's skin, 26. 
Cardinal Shore, 219, 278. 
Carlyle's writing, 166. 
Carpenter, William Ben|amin, 84. 
Catkins, 33, 103, 106, 191,212, 296. 
Cat-tail, its down, 216. 
Celandine, 227. 
Chalmers, Dr. Thomas, 218. 
Character, 22, 248. 
Charity, 231. 
Chastity, 61. 

Cheapness, in ourselves, 233ii 
Chickadees, 4, 6, 31, 34, 88, 100, 124^ 

200, 203, 2^. 
Chickweed (Stellaria media), 196. 
Cbrysalids, 114. 
Cicindelas (glow worms), 221. 



350 



INDEX 



Civilization, 10. 

Cladonias, 79, 100, 318. 

Clams, 11. 

Clam-shell Hill, 11, 23, 60, 104, 132, 
198, 333. 

Clematis Brook, 317, 319. 

Clergymen, 24. 

Clitfs, 20, 91, 113, 129, 202, 242, 249, 
251, 281, 289, 304, 310, 317, 324, 
333. 

Clothing, 238. 

Clouds, 59, 75. 

CoccifersB (Uchena), 79. 

Cocks, ushering in the (Uwn, 14S. 

Columella, 312. 

Common sense in the Texy old booi^ 
223. 

Communities, 48. 

Compliments, 244. 

Conautum, 303. 

Conantum End, 318, 319. 

Concord, its Indian inhabitants, 176. 

Cones, willow and other, their ori- 
gin, 226. 

Conferva, 66. 

Consistency, the Mcret of health, 
26G. 

Convention, 267. 

Correction of MSS., 32. 

Country, living in the, 72. 

Cow-bells, influence of, 316. 

Cowslip (Caltha palustris), 62, 104| 
227, 277, 326, 341. 

Cranberry, mountain, 88. 

Creepers, brown, 32. 

Criticism, 7 ; the most effective, 142 ; 
cobwebs of, 203 ; how to criticise 
one^s own composition, 288, 836. 

Crow blackbirds, their notii de- 
scribed, 341. 

Crowfoot (buttercup), 345. 

Crows, 31, 62. 

Crystals, frost, 270. 

Cup-lichens (cladonias), lOOi 

Cuvier, 276. 

Day, an elysian, 322. 

Days, their aerial differences, 163. 

Death, without continuance, 119. 

Deep Cut, 1, 4. 

Dippers, 246. 

Discontent, 116. 

Diversion, 13. 

Dock, 52. 

Dodge's Brook, 296. 

Dog-wood, poison, 97. 

Doubt, can be afforded by the wise, 

224. 
Ducks, 21, 34, 56, 77, 96, 146, 160, 



198, 245, 246, 247, 263, 265, 278, 
280, 293, 303, 321, 328. 

Ea«rle, 242, 272, 273 ; white-headed, 

336 
Eagle Field, 26. 
Ei^h, its surface in early March, 90, 

61 ; a graveyard and a graniury, 

112 ; its warmth in ploughing time, 

254; its color in early spring, 264 ; 

its beauty, 314. 
Education, 231. 
Emys, 102. See Tortoise. 
Epigsea, 839. 

Epilobium coloratum, 89l 
Equisetum, 102. 

Eternal relations of objects, 9061, 
Eternity, an emblem of, 316. 
Evelyn, John, 213. 
Events, 8, 30. 

Expensiveness of valuable work, 848^ 
Experience, in the head and fix4;ef% 

308. 
Eye, the human, Ood*8 private mine, 

138; anchored to earth, 240. 

Failure, 178. 

Fair Haven, 2, 277. 

Fair Haven Hill, 245, 30S. 

Fair Haven Fond, 67, 76, 206, 928, 
320. 

Fame, 128. 

Farm, 20. 

Farmer, 141, 

Fields, their color, 237. 

"Fadel'eau,"4. 

Finch, grass (white-in-tail), 123. 

Finch, purple, 312, 333. 

Fishes, their revival, 192. 

Fishhawk, 260. 

Flattery, 244. 

Flicker (pigeon woodpecker), 31. 
160, 223, «», 326. 

Flint^s Bridge, 165, 162. 

Flint's Pond, 33, 293. 

Foxes, 76, 152. 

Franklin, Sir John, 283. 

Freedom, 241. 

Freshet, 19. 

Friend, advice of a, 28 ; in reserve, 
186 ; difficulty of reading a, 263. 

Friendship, 4, 9 ; how alienated, 66 ; 
pleasure of frankness in, 112 ; all- 
adventuring, 231 ; a great promiae, 
248; waning, 252 quatrain oo, 
274; harmony in, 307; antiquity 
of, 334. iSee Love. 

Fringilla hiemalis (snow-bird), 77, 
135, 191, 194, 249, 296, 297, 302 
303,319. 



INDEX 



851 



Frog, wood, 145, 219, 229, 240. 
Frogs, 214, 229, 243, 291, 333. See 

Hylodea. 
Frog spittle, 66. 

Oeem, wUd, 135, 249, 262, 265, 293, 

303. 
Oeiuiu,330. 
Gentlemen, 108. 
Onapbalium, 123. 
Onatfl, 123, 180. 
Ood, false view of, 91. 
Oolden age, 322. 
Golden-rod (Solidago), 89. 
Goldfinches, 333. 
Goosanders, 222, 245, 328. 8e€ 

Sheldrake. 
Goose Pond, little, 342. 
Goshawk, 260. 
Grackles (blackbirds), 91, 180, 811, 

341. 
Grackle Swamp, 179. 
Grape cuttings, 66. 
Grass, 142,^, 311, 318. 
Grass finch (white-in-tail), 123. 
Gratitude, 195. 

Great Fields, 39, 132, 140, 316. 
Great Meadows, 37, 65, 96, 140, 141, 

155,235. 
Great questions, 72. 
Greatness, unstrained, 0. 
Grebe, 32. 
Greece, 1. 

Green, the color of life, 304. 
Greenness, beginning, 158. 
Grubs, 123. 

Gulls, 77, 146, 223, 265, 320, 321. 
Gyrinus, 76. 

Hare, 73. 

Hawk, American sparrow, 250. 
Hawk, fish, 260. 
Hawk, meadow, 98, 250. 
Hawk, red-shouldered, 251. 
Hawk, red-tailed, 234, 251, 819. 
Hawk, sharp-shinned, 260. 
Hawks, 31, 39, 40, 76, 88, 96, 143, 

219, 234, 242, 260, 302, 819. 
Haze, 177, 321. 
Hazel, 213, 243, 265, 287. 
Hearing, good, 52. 
Helix albolabris (white mail), 304. 
Hen barrier, 261. 
Hen-houaes, more thought of than 

heaven, 314. 
Hens, 33, GO. 
" Herbatio," 120. 
Heywood*s Peak, 271, 272. 
mil, the, 169, 291. 
Hillside, russet, ito beauty, 127, 131. 



Homer, 46. 

Horizon, 129. 

Horse, 60. 

House, 176, 193. 

Hubbard Path, 234. 

Hubbard's Bridge, 318. 

Hubbard*8 Close. 130, 142, 280. 

Hue, of the mind, 9. 

Hunt's Bridge, 311. 

Hurry, 201. 

Hyla, its piercing note, 107; 810, 

326. See Hylodes. 
Hylodes, 304, 219, 291, 322. See 

Hyla. 

Ice, 15, 49, 65, 75, 84, 118, 141, 213, 

294; a study of, 38. 
Hiad 46. 
Indian, 68, 93, 162, 187; reUca, 89, 

125, 132, 266. 
Indigo bird, 76. 
Indigo weed, 26. 
Information, 167, 188. 
Intercourse, 266 ; ineffectoal, 809. 
Island, 286. 

Jay, 31, 123. 
Johnswort, 61. 
Jonson, Ben, 66. 

Kibbe Place, 195. 

Knowledge, its nature, 14; of one 
another, 267. 

Laborer, the efficient, 281. 

Lakes, vernal, 263. 

LambkiU, 69. 

Landscape, 43, 58, 69, 63, 220. 

Lark, meadow, 122, 124, 137, 235, 
299,324. 

Lark, shore, 228. 

Latebrse, 114. 

Law, 17, 147. 

Leaves, radical, 101. 

Lecturer, his success, 109. 

Lee's Bridge, 317, 321. 

Lee's Cliff, 143, 219, 246, 263, 278, 
319. 

Lee's' Hill (Nawshawtnok), 72, 116 ; 
view of river from, 332. 

Lichens, 60, 64, 79, 122, 127, 314, 317, 
318. 

Life, a rose-colored view of, 12 ; im- 
pcMBSible to explain according to 
mechanical laws, 82, 83; rusty, 
107; the healthy. Ill; a continu- 
ous condition, 119 ; must be lived 
alone, 128 ; all things alive to the 
poet and to God, 129; grandeur 
of, 134 ; how we should use, 186. 



852 



INDEX 



Light, 21. 185. 

Linaria, 64, 77. See Redpoll. 

LinnsBus (Liim^, Karl von), 120, 302. 

Literature, a social thing, 301. 

Little River, 200. 

Love, 63, 133, 267 ; the burden of 
Nature's odes, 35; of the great 
and solitary heart, 138 ; uplifting 
power of, 186; a thirst that is 
never slaked, 2^ <9ee Friendship. 

Luphie Hill, 268. 

Lupine promontory, 43, 71. 

Luxuries, intellectual, 114. 

Lydgate, John, 282. 

Magnanimity, 240. 

Majesty, in a bird, 281. 

Man, too much insisted on, 300 ; his 

institutions, 301 ; destiny of, 308 ; 

gregarious, 313. 
Manners, 273. 

Maple blossoms, 212, 290, 297, 327. 
Maple sap, 49, 58, 74, 97, 199. 
Maple sugar, 68, 199. 
March, scenery, 126; phenomena, 

210 ; inclemency, 276. 
Marten, pine (?), 107. 
Martial Miles's, 243, 268. 
Meadows, 160, 179, 251. 
Meanness, 331. 
Menander, 1. 
Merganser, 328. See Gooaander and 

Sheldrake. 
Merrick's pasture, 298. 
Migration, interior, 195. 
Minmermus, 1. 
Ministerial Swamp, 127, 200. 
Mink, 87, 122, 234. 
Minott, 32, 95, 104. 
Misunderstanding, honest, 72. 
Mole, 8. 
Money, lending, 37; oommcm idea 

of, 315. 
Moonlight, walk by, 78. 
Moose, 104. 

Morning, ambrosial, 99 ; philosophiz- 
ing in, 157; in spring, 201-203; 

influence of, 315, 316. 
Moth, emperor, 5. 
Mount Misery, 294, 321. 
Mount Tabor, 288. 
Mouse nests, 74, 130, 142. 
Mullein, 295. 
Mus leucopus (Arvida Emmonsii), 

130. 
Music, history of, 85 ; of the streams, 

124. 
Muskrat (musquash), 11, 69, 95, 109, 

113, 162, 336; paths, 76, 236, 268; 

houses, 219, 234 ; nest, 268. 



Nacre, 11. 

Nature, and man, preference "de 
gustibus," 15; and science, 26; 
healing power of, 129 ; originality 
of, 138; her methods must be 
studied, 166 ; voice of, 170 ; primi- 
tive, 217 ; her laws immutable but 
not rigid, 266 ; glorified by men, 
342. 

Nawshawtuok. See Lee's HilL 

Nes»a (swamp loosestrife), 76. 

News, trivial, 79, 310. 

Newspapers, 310. 

Nightshade Pond, 320. 

Night warbler, 335. 

November, 276. 

Nuthatch, 2, 6, 819 ; white-breeeted. 
31, 70. 

Nut Meadow Brook, 101, 238, 903, 
335. 

Nutting, Sam or Fox, 104. 

Observation, exoeiatre, 214, 276i> 
Originality, 26. 
Ornithology, 56. 
Osiers, 2, 66, 163. 
Owls, 31, 341. 

Paradox, 124. 

Parry, Sir Edward, 284. 

Partridge, 2, 31, 78, 90, 110, aSS. 

Peabody, W. B. O., 288. 

Peace ci mind, 241. 

Persons, 230, 231. 

Peterboro' Hills, 296, 317. 

Phebe, 138, 150, 824. 

Philanthropy, tiresome, 300. 

Philosophers, foolish, 306. 

** PhiloeophU Botanica," 120. 

Piano, 346. 

Pickerel, 304. 

Pine, 8, 18, 88, 97, 114, 170, 181, 182, 

185. 
Pine, pitch, 18, 114, 186. 
Phie, white, 8, 88, 97, 181. 
Pine Hill, 29, 272. 
Pine warbler, 303, 836, 340. 
Pinweed, 127. 
Pitcher plant, 61. 
Plantain, rattlesnake, 99. 
Pleasures, cheap, 116. 
Ploughing, 254. 
Poet, the, his sympathy with natine, 

20, 306; nature's brother, 47; 

away from home, 232 ; growth of, 

336 ; superiority of, 347. 
Poetry, 20. 
Polina, 309. 
Populus. See Aspen. 
I Potato-vine, 84. 






Blbblt, TB, M. 

RillKHd, Utnotlia for nlklng, 93. 

Rain, W6 ; In Apiil, 290 ; mJofiiuDt 



RuulooUuIla, 230 ; Bun haltoina, 
333; Bum pikliuirli, 2U', " — 
pllileu,'M4. 5m Frog*. 

lUviiH, how fomuid, 23, 



», 311. 



e BlAoktdrd. 



KaUd, Indiu, 39, 125, 13 



e, 131. 



ReporU of sipei 

nwds, 3ZI, 21^ Stn. 
BstLnmeiiC, IgS. 
Rhodorft,^. 

Rlu, lii> Ufa tweliii, HE. 
lUohuduo, Sir John, 283. 
BIp«i>e«,84. 
Rlmr, openLng, IT ; Ilk* ■ liibAmfet 

lu i^DuI, 109 ; ( highny. 214. 
Robbi, 20, 31, 82, 1!S, 137, ISI, 187 

^ 2M, 29e, 2S9, 311, 312, 31B 

(UmUUculii Uuhlsober 






Ruuet [colDTlDg), 12T, 221. 

SC HUiiiB, ^mns OcoSrov, 278. 

St. Johuirort, 61. 

B&lti, 1T4. 

Balii alba, Salii liiim!l!>, Balli la- 
eldi, B>llx nigra. Balli padlalla- 
rig, Salli patiolaria, BaUi Taney- 
■u, 11S,m ^MWIllav. 

BiaOu) Pana, phllowptaan likaned 
to, 303. 

Bap, aider and iriUow, 113; nupla, 
4B, SS, T4, 9e, 97. lOft. 

Buotbra, 127. 

3^iafactloiia, almpla. 114. 

Siw-mill, lu tlnipilalty, 23. 

SuUrage, 60. 317, 344: watar, 101; 

■ goUm, 277. 




Bnaw.bird. SmFtIi 

Baoir-bantlnEH, 20, 41, GO. 

Bocia^, 186, m 

BoUdago <goIdan-rodV 39. 

Sorrow, a ramlndar or plsaaoTe. 307. 

Bool, deittny of tbe, 303. 

Sound, 47, (10, 3*0. 

BpanoK, 13a. 2g(>.'3on. 

Bparnjw, chippiDg, 340. 

BparttnF, fo.-coloceri, 134, 158, 286, 



2M, afe, 319, ,1MP, S 



2.115, 



134, le, in?, 1 

296, 299. 302. 31i. oit, ^>^. .>^ 
Sparrow, Crea, 31, 134. 193. 198, 250, 

2S7, 29a, 302. 313, 323, 324. 
Special, atmggle of, 211. 
BpliiU, anlmid, !ia 
BpriDg, prophadaa of. 1 i atemal 

youth of, 29 i of tilt alraanaa and 

-'-alura.30; dlitantpFoaHctof, 
earUeat glg>i> ot, 79, tS. 226 ! 



354 



INDEX 



Squirrel, ground or striped, %, 164, 
197. 

Squirrel, red, 73, 116, 126, 279; 
nest of, 298. 

Stars, 177. 

Stellaria media (chickweed), 195. 

" Story of Thebes," 282. 

Style, literary, the result of char- 
acter, 22. 

Success, 201. 

Sudbury Meadows, 87. 

Superhuman, the, 60. 

Surveying, 322. 

Suspicion, 335. 

Swallows, white-bellied, 322, 323. 

Swamp, 284; Yellow Birch, 76; 
Ministerial, 127, 200 ; Orackle, 179. 

Sweet flag, 346. 

Talent, 248. 

TarbeU Hill, 55. 

Technical terms, 35. 

Telegraph harp, 1, 94, 121, 213, 268. 

Temperature, effect of changes in, 
157. 

Thoreau, his relation to nature, 65, 
285, 286; resolves to be imani- 
mouB, 134 ; aspirations, 140 ; views 
of life, 156; imitation of wild 
geese, 190; philanthropy, 233; 
what he likes m a letter, ^ ; his 
purchases, 345. 

Thoughts, while walking, 15, 34; 
magnitude of a great thought, 201 ; 
continuity of a wise man's great 
thoughts, 224 ; the most imiversal, 
300, 301 ; incommunicable, 344. 

Tinder, 76. 

Toad, its ringing note, 293. 

Tortoise, 102, 104, 204. See Emys. 

Trapping, 7, 337, 338. 

TraveUng, 114, 347. 

Trout, 74, 143. 

Truth, 63, 139. 

Urabilicaria Muhlenbergii (rock 

tripe), 95. 
Uncannimuc, 288. 

Vanessa antiopa (mourning cloak 
butterfly), 253, 322. 

" Veeshnoo Sarma," 223. 

Vegetation, unceasing in our cli- 
mate, 91 ; under the snow, 277. 



Verse, 282. 

Viola pedata, 339. 

Vireo, red-eyed (red-eye), 5. 

Vireo, white^yed, 336. 

Virtue, 267. 

Walden, 29, 32, 33, 61, 91, 276, 280^ 
294. . 

Walking, in stormy weather, 90, 
318. 

Walks, circumscribed, 172. 

War, 19. 

Warbler, pine, 303, 335, 340. 

Warmth, spring, 62. 

Water, the blood of the earth, 21 ; 
wind aM, 43-46, 136, 299, 342 ; on 
overflowed meadows, 87 ; reflec- 
tions in, 96 ; over ice, 98 ; of 
spring, 109 ; and floating ice, 113 ; 
blueneas of, 124; reign of, 125; 
colors of, 154 ; land and, 221, 263. 

Waxwork, 126. 

Weather, its gradations, 190; its 
effect upon us, 284, 286. 

Weathorwise, the, 146. 

Well Meadow, 277. 

Whistlers, 246. 

White-in-taU (grass finch), 123. 

WiUow, 2, 113, 117, 173, 174. See 
Salix. 

Willow Bay, 198. 

WiUow Row, 323. 

Wilson, Alexander, 329, 390. 

Wind, noise made by, 181 ; playing 
on water, 43-46, 136, 342, 343. 

Winter, short days of, 29, 58 ; Eng- 
lish, 189 ; its breaking up within 
us, 196. 

Wood, its colors, 72. 

Woodchuck, 116, 150; hole^ 116, 
130, 150, 275; aUna, 26, 116; 
tracks, 116, 150. 

Woodcock, 320. 

Woodis Park, 89. 

Woodpecker, 81, 159, 202 ; downy, 
31, 203; pigeon, 31, 160, W^ 
326. 

Words, poetic, 213. 

World, how finite, 240. 

Writer, the, 223. 

Yellow Birch Swamp, 76. 
Youth, susceptible bat not discrim- 
inating, 299.